<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>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><br><br><br>Shiju<br><br><br><br>
<br><br><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Bishakha Datta <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bishakhadatta@gmail.com">bishakhadatta@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com" target="_blank">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">
<div><br></div><div>The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning to read and write English already.</div>
<div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Dear Gerard,</div><div><br></div><div>I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here.</div><div><br></div><div>Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so, that is probably true - but is that what you mean?</div>
<div><br></div><div><div>For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and write in indic languages.</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div>Bishakha</div><div> </div></font></span></div>
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