Gerard,<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:37 PM, Gerard Meijssen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com">gerard.meijssen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Hoi,<div><ul><li>You agree with me that these people exist.</li><li>The Malayalam Wikisource is getting more attention then the Malayalam Wikipedia</li><li>It is relatively easy to learn to read the script. </li><li>Having native speakers type text that they could decipher is something they can do if they choose</li>
<li>Everybody benefits when more literature is transcribed</li></ul></div></blockquote><br></div>Such people exist but they are a minority. Teaching them their language is not the way to grow Indic language projects even if they are already part of the community.<br>
<br>Taking the case of Tamil, we do have highly qualified tech groups like <a href="http://thamizha.com/">http://thamizha.com/</a> that support FOSS. We also have organizations like <a href="http://infitt.org/">http://infitt.org/</a> that have the best of developers, Govt. officials, software makers, thinkers, academicians that work with international organizations like Unicode consortium. <br>
<br>So, you need to identify the right people to partner with for Wikimedia.<br><br>India is a country of many languages with varying problems and specialities. In this situation, don't make generalizations and call Indians illiterate of their languages in an international blog.<br>
<br>Ravi<br>