@sabretou

Please read how the flag was designed, who made it and who adopted it:

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/dz-kab.html

Besides, and because of this flag, many Kabyles willing to participate to the Tatoeba project in their dialect would simply shun the website.

He says:
>>>> It does'nt belong to a special organization.

I have just given the proof that it's the MAK movement that designed the flag, the flag isn't unanimously adopted by Kabyles as their symbol. The MAK separatist movement represents only itself and its members. I just wonder what proof Belkacem77 has presented to prove that this flag is that of all Kabyles. There is a Tatoeba user that doesn't want to continue contributing sentences in Kabyle because of the MAK flag and he asked me to raise the issue. I can send copies of his private messages to the admins in case they request that. Actually, he agreed that I raise the issue to the admins. Should what Belkacem77 say be taken for face value? I have proof here and he has no proof at all.

>>>> and in Algeria the Chawi Flag, the Mozabit Flag,

The flags he is talking about could either belong to autonomist movements that represent only those movements alone and most of the Amazigh-speaking residents of those Shawi (Aures) area and the Mzab Valley don't even know them.

He mentioned the flags of Catalonia, Cosrica and the Basque Country and I say once again that the flag of the MAK separatist movement is neither the flag of a recognized autonomous or administrative region in Algeria. Kabylie straddles 7 different Algerian wilayas (provinces) and it's more than a human-geographic region than an administrative region with clear borders. It's true that it has its own dialect(s) and cultural particularism (just as any region in Algeria) however, it neither has formal administrative borders nor a cultural flag that every Kabyle identifies with. Catalonia, Corsica and the Basque Country have official territories that are designed and recognized by the central governments of the countries they belong to. Their flags are also officially recognized by the central governments of those countries. Those flags were also designed centuries ago and weren't created by modern separatist organizations.

People have the right to choose to support or not support a political organization and not all Kabyles (far from it indeed) support this separatist and potentially dangerous organization called MAK. Therefore, I reiterate that I insistently request Tatoeba to change this flag and have it replaced with a different language flag.

Sabretou: I also find your suggestion of replacing it with a white flag containing the ISO code for the Kabyle dialect is a good idea as well.

>>>> Let me tell you that I don't care about politics and most of the kabyle contributors did.

Then I understand that you're OK with changing the flag? Cool then...

>>>> And you have a serious pronlem with sociolinguistics. You are still qualifying Kabyle as a vulgar dialect!!!

Once again, I advise you not to make me the topic of the discussion by attacking me personally. Oh, don't worry. I'm already used to the MAK movement insults and rabid online lynchings, and whether you continue attacking me or not, I'll continue discussing this problem nonstop. Therefore, if you and your fellow contributors are bugged by what I say, I'm sorry. There's nothing I could do for you if what you hate is the simple fact that I express myself freely on an online website that doesn't belong to the MAK movement. And now, let's get back to my "problem with sociolinguistics." I'm afraid that you have nothing to teach me about this aspect of linguistics. I took linguistics for 4 years in college and I know what a dialect is. I am not belittling my own dialect, Kabyle, therefore, don't "take it fresh" to your friends on your Facebook page and tell lies on me that I "hate" Kabyles and the Amazigh Kabyle dialect. I even think that it's the leaders of the separatist MAK movement that hate Kabyles and are even ready to lead them to a disaster with Mehenni's dangerous statements that he made last June (2018).

>>>> I lived for a while in the Chawiya territory and no Chawi could understand me, and can't understand him.

Here we go again with denying the undeniable. Your experience is personal. No one was there with you to check whether it was true or not and how you tried to communicate with them. My proof was factual: I posted links to videos of Shawis and Kabyles speaking on a television show and they could understand each other and I also posted another link to a video of a guy from Chlef that everyone in Kabylie could understand. Your personal stories offer no proof. Your readers on this website from Canada or India can't verify if this is true or not but they could ask Kabyles to verify the mutual intelligibility of those videos.

>>>> Unicity notion comes from our background within algerian school/language politics/religion: One language (arabic), one religion (Islam)...

I have a problem with diversity? Please come back to your senses, dude! Am I not the one who is calling for the embracing of all this dialectal diversity under a single Amazigh banner? If I had a problem with diversity, I would have been a member of your team that considers Kabyle as a language on its own. However, I consider Kabyle as a tile, a bridge, as a stone in a language continuum that, as I said in one of my previous messages, stretches from at least southern Tunisia to northern Morocco. A language continuum composed of Tunisian dialects, Shawi, Tasahlit, mainstream Kabyle, Blida Atlas Tamazight, the Chenoua dialect, Beni Snous (Tlemcen, Algeria), and Riffian in Morocco. We think differently. It's natural. You have chosen your language school and I have chosen mine. Salem Chaker's school, the school of linguists that still considers that the Amazigh language is a set of related dialects, not the school of linguists that say that Amazigh is a family of closely-related languages. Why would you try to impose your view on me. I don't believe and would not believe in it and I am taking concrete steps, alongside many other Amazighs in various regions, to build a modern standard or vehicular language for us all, ie Kabyles and other Amazigh speakers. Where is the problem with that? Aren't you being intolerant here? Just continue whatever you are doing and let others continue their work, too. Wasn't that what you were saying yourself a few weeks ago?

>>>> We were born in Kabylia, raised and lived there, unlike you who was born in Algiers and still living tehere.

Here you go with personal attacks again. Are you trying to cast doubt about my language competence? As I told you, I could sell you away and back in my language yet I seriously doubt that many of your peers are as competent as I am. And there's not just me. Many, many Algiers-born Kabyles are more competent in Amazigh (Kabyle) than many of your friends in Kabylie. And what are you trying to imply here? That you are "superman" simply because you were born in Kabyle. I completely hate and despise this view. I am utterly disgusted by this racist view. You see how racist and despicable you and your friends are even towards other Kabyles? I know how the members of the separatist group think and even if you'd perhaps deny that you're not a member of that group, you're one of their sympathizers. You would make sure to insult and try and hurt just anyone who disagrees with you even if they were born in Kabylie or in the same village as you. So please, Belkacem77, please... stop that silly game. It's getting too personal here but also too ridiculous. Oh, and by the way... you have already insulted me in this racist way multiple times on your disgusting Facebook page and... well... I'm sort of glad that you couldn't resist to continue to belittle me with this racist argument even here on Tatoeba.

And now, let's give you and the naive or ill-intentioned people that are racist towards Algiers Kabyle an appropriate response:

Many of the Kabyles that were born in Algiers regularly visit Kabylie. I myself spent part of my childhood in Kabylie and you, miserable guy, don't have anything to teach me about this region which I consider my native region as well. I know just everything about the region: towns, villages, people, families, friends. I married a woman from the area. I visit regularly. I stay there regularly. I also do cultural activities there (talks, trainings, Amazigh classes, Amazigh book distribution and promotion, etc.). You're not going to question my love or my commitment to promote the Amazigh Kabyle culture and my concern to protect Kabylie, its people, its culture, and even its nature. Your attempt to try and "reject" me from "Kabylehood" was too weak and too naive.


>>> You are not academician.. so you can't understand linguistics implications as they can do.

Laughable. I think that even foreign Tatoeba readers are going to laugh at that. I took 4 years of linguistics. I graduated from a language department. Hello.... good morning... anybody there? Language studies are the same no matter which language you study. They studied linguistics and I did, too. They can speak the Amazigh Kabyle dialect and I can speak it, too. In fact, I have also taught it in a cultural association in various cultural centers across Algiers and I probably write in Amazigh more than most academicians do. You can't fool anyone, Belkacem77: I have had a look at your Facebook pages and also your Tatoeba pages and you communicate in French on all those pages. One of your peers called me "alienated" (totally assimilated by another culture). You seem to love to judge people without knowing them. You judge people who don't agree with you to belittle them and, therefore, discredit them. You seem to be miserably trying to attack me from various angles to weaken me and make me doubt myself, but nah... no, no, no... This isn't working. Belkacem77: It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the problems we are talking about. Even if I didn't study linguistics in my university curriculum, if I read enough books and had enough interest, I'd be able to mop the floor with you at linguistics. Many language activists never even went to college and they could understand and discuss linguistic problems. So please don't play that card of "you need to have a PhD in linguistics to talk to me and my friends."

And I'm pretty sure that even if I don't have the same (prestigious) academic level that some of your peers have, I'm much better than you at linguistics. You're a computer scientist. You specialize in computers. I graduated in a foreign language and I, believe me, I DO KNOW all what there is to know to discuss linguistics. And... I kid you not: I have also been doing field research since 1996. Where were you back then? Sleeping? At college? At school? It doesn't matter. But as far as I am concerned, I was already collecting Kabyle poetry, proverbs, and folk tales in Kabyle villages (Azazga, Timizar, Issers, Yakouren, Ouadhias, Ain-El-Hammam, Toudja, Beni Douala, etc.). I'll soon publish a Kabyle-French dictionary almost as big as Dallet's dictionary, and I am very experienced at lexicography, dialectology, etymology, and many other sub-fields of linguistics (which is a vast science, naturally).

So please don't insult me so childishly. We're no longer in elementary school where a kid would try and annoy you with personal attacks. If you don't have anything to say, just keep quiet. Hey, and don't be a hypocrite: If I joined your team under the MAK racist and separatist movement, you would have spoken high of me to your hypocrite peers (you're a hypocrite yourself because you have all been insulting me on your page and there is even a brilliant guy who is encouraging you to "lynch me in public"). But now as I said no to participating in your project, you're attacking, belittling, and insulting me. Shame on you. I'm utterly disgusted by your hypocrisy.


>>>> I will ask all the 60 contributors on our Kabyle FB page of Tatoeba and say them if the actual flag hurts them and come back again.

OK, and I will be doing my job on the other side.

>>>> I invite you to our Facebook page where the community is discussing about our locale on Tatoeba. FB is more open and more easy to discuss things. FB page: https://web.facebook.com/groups/1339836186152877/

I publicly reject your invitation. I hate hypocrites. You have been insulting me on your Facebook page. You're apparently so upset with my refusal to be part of linguistic separatism that you couldn't contain yourself and you even attacked me personally on Tatoeba. Mind you that some of your FB friends insulted me with vulgar words and you seemed to approve that. Another person called for my "public lynching". Of course, I am not afraid of cowards like those. I lived through the dark decade of terrorism in the Algerian civil war on the 1990's, so I wouldn't be afraid of a despicable and cowardly big-mouthed "keyboard warrior." I would love not to have anything to do with you after this.

>>>> You also discover other works: Kabyle Common voice with Mozilla, Deep Speech, STT, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Linux Mint, OpenSuse, Evernote, CLDR, .....

I know you. I helped you occasionally. I guess you know who I am. But now I'm not interested in your work nor am I interested in talking to you unless there is something that needs to be answered.

Oh, and by the way and regarding LibreOffice, OpenOffice, etc. I'm actively involved in working on the Amazigh (BER) version of those programs. Forgot to mention that. We are even working on a huge Amazigh (BER) Wikipedia that's still in the incubator. The world is big, vast, diverse, and people are pretty much free to be creative and work on whatever they choose to.