Re: [Languages] Indigenous Language Digital Activism

Unfortunately, the analysis was pretty quick. The number of the languages of Colombia with more than 10,000 speakers is limited to few of them and the only language with good potential is Wayuu [1][2]. It's spoken in northern Colombia, which is pretty far from Bogota. However, I suppose that you'd be able to find some Wayuu speakers in Bogota, as well as Wikimedia Colombia could help you. The only other maybe reachable (and definitely closer to than Wayuu) is Catío [3][4]. This one is on the Pacific coast, ~300 kilometers from Bogota as the craw flies. All other languages are either spoken in jungle, or the number of speakers is very low, or it's about languages which primary caring country is one of the Colombia neighboring ones (it could be that the number of speakers in Colombia is significant, but there are no schools etc. in Colombia, literacy rate is significantly lower -- which means below 1% -- and standard has been already developed in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela or Panama). So, besides possibility to find Wayuu speakers (although the majority of population live in Venezuela, more than 100,000 of them live in Colombia), I would suggest you to find any group of speakers of any language (except Spanish, of course :) ) and try to work with them. Obviously, if you find a group of five literate enthusiasts who speak a language with ~1000 speakers, it could be the game changer for their language. Having a group of ~10 speakers of various languages but willing to cooperate together could be also a good idea. Useful information is also that literacy rate among those people in their native language is at the best 1-2%. Usually, they are better in Spanish, and it could be 5-25%. By the standards of the Old World, this is extremely low literacy rate anyway. Positive side is that it's likely that they have writing system developed and it's 100% Latin. Thus, if they are literate, they wouldn't have any significant issues in writing their language by computers. On the cultural side, keep in mind that it's very likely that they could have significant issues with Colombian government, as well as they could have issues with the Catholic Church (though much less). Thus, it's likely that they would have aversion toward anything which comes from the government, including the writing system (though, unlike neighboring countries, Colombia didn't do much here). So, it's fairly possible that those who are literate are willing to use their own writing system, very likely not documented at all, but likely based on Latin script. In other words, an anthropologist would be a good companion in your tour, no matter of the Wikimedian part of the work. As we don't have (yet) a body which deals with the situations like this one is, feel free to contact me for any kind of linguistic and Wikimedian logistic support. As a member of Language committee, I will for sure explain what they should do to create Wikipedia in their languages, as well as help as much as I am able to do that. I will check the languages again tomorrow to see if I missed something. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayuu_language [2] http://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/guc/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catio_language [4] http://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/cto/ On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Languages mailing list Languages(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/languages