<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Shiju Alex <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:shijualexonline@gmail.com">shijualexonline@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im"><div>Ravi shankar said: <br></div><blockquote style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">If your ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated
minority English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make
them contribute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am
not even sure if it fits inside Wikipedia's mission.<br></blockquote><br><br></div>Yes. that is true. I do not forsee such a thing happening for Indic wikis. :) <br><br><br>Is Gerard is trying to convey the idea of <b>Mother Language illiteracy? </b>Remember by illiteracy of a language, we mean the inability <b>to read or write</b> (rather than speaking) that specific language. I must say Mother Language illiteracy is rising in Indian cities and in some states (for example, Kerala). <br>
<br>In fact if you go through the discussions that I am sharing with you (about different language wiki communities), many Indic language wikipedians are also raising the same concern. <br><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
</font></span></blockquote><div>I guess my point is to distinguish between illiteracy and non-use or low use (in reading and writing), which is more my personal situ on Bengali, Hindi, Marathi.</div><div><br></div><div>So I feel like there may be three or more categories of persons for each language:</div>
<div><br></div><div>-Speakers who read and write in that lang</div><div>-Speakers who don't read and write in that lang (non or low users)</div><div>-Speakers who don't know how to read and write in that lang (illiterate, although I don't like the word)</div>
<div><br></div><div>And agree with Ravi that it would be hard to get both those who are not literate in a language or low users of it to contribute in that language. For example, I would be reluctant to contribute in the languages I speak, but don't write or read in everyday, even though I am technically literate in them.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><div>Bishakha</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>