Montenegrin Code Problem

[Luka]

Hello everyone,

I would like to point out to a couple of very serious issues that are left
open for years now with the Montenegrin language. It is currently assigned
with a sr-ME code which implies its former, outdated status of Serbian
spoken in Montenegro. Namely, Serbian spoken in Montenegro and Montenegrin
language are two distinct things, which the LoC recognized and hence
assigned the “cnr” code to Montenegrin.

What has been done in CLDR however was not reflective of this change.
Instead, sr-ME (Serbian in Montenegro) has merely been renamed to
Montenegrin, even though these two are distinct standardized languages with
different, mutually excluding orthographies! As a result, the localization
is totally wrong, it ended up being a horrible mish-mash of very little
actual Montenegrin thrown here and there, and two different dialects of
Serbian (Ijekavian, the dialect of Serbian spoken in Montenegro as well as
Ekavian, the dialect spoken exclusively in Serbia inherited from the sr
parent directory since little work is done for sr-ME specifically, I saw
that since I registered for the Survey Tool).

Aside from the immensely serious issue of horrible localization that came
as a result, I have personally found it to be the case that most developers
I have been in touch with when offering to translate their apps to
Montenegrin have told me either that they do not have Montenegrin as an
option but only Serbian (Montenegro) or that “they already have Serbian.”
As a result, there is literally no proper localization in Montenegrin, even
bigger companies such as Google and Microsoft stick with recognizing it as
Serbian (Montenegro) due to the sr-ME code and do not offer their services
in Montenegrin. As a result there is no Google Translate in Montenegrin,
Google Keyboard in Montenegrin is a copy-paste of the Serbian version with
no actual Montenegrin, Windows is offered in Serbian (Montenegro) etc.

All this totally defeats the purpose of localization since neither the
speakers of Serbian language in Montenegro are respected (since now there
is no such thing as Serbian (Montenegro) in CLDR so their own dialect isn’t
covered), nor the speakers of Montenegrin are (due to it being in the
Serbian parent directory, inheriting all the wrong localizations and
essentially dead for any serious localization attempt by any company,
making the lives of Montenegrins significantly more difficult. Not to
mention the unfairness of having Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, three other
members of the macro language that Montenegrin belongs to, all have their
own codes and proper localizations, while only the speakers of Montenegrin
do not).

I would not be raising this issue here since it’s already been filed under
CLDR-10769 on Atlassian, however, except for me stating these same points,
it’s been dead for 2 years now, with no priority assigned and no assignees.
I’d be immensely grateful if I could get any response on this issue.

Yours faithfully,
Luka.
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