daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African
languages. However, I
think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
"African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers, and
just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
million speakers and only 6 articles)?
So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace the term "African
languages" with "languages in developing regions." Speakers of Pashto,
Tajik,
and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong Wikipedia just as much as the
speakers of Swahili.
This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.
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