Hello Jon
Thanks for your quick response.
Well, for languages such as Twi and Ewe and the others, we've got our
local software we use called the Kasahorow keyboard (
kasahorow.com). It
works perfectly and does all needed in writing articles in our local
languages.
Our concern currently, is that, we want to correct the tons of
grammatical and wording errors on the
ak.wikipedia.org landing page.
We'll love to have an interface like the
en.wikipedia.org, however, in
Akan. Since myself, and any other Akan native speaker is not an Admin or
a Sysop, we urgently wish to have someone like you, who will take
translations from us and input it on the landing page for us.
We are building the Akan language in Google Translate Toolkit very fast
so that many articles can be translated by many Ghanaians into Akan very
simple.
So please, can you help us build a nice interface for the
Ak.Wikipedia.org Website? We'll love to have your support.
Thank you!
Rexford
On 7/18/2012 10:28 PM, Jon Harald Søby wrote:
Hi all. I think I should introduce myself first: I am
Jon Harald Søby
from Norway. I am a global sysop on Wikimedia projects (which means I
can help you delete things from Wikipedias with no adins if you need
it!), and have been a Wikipedian for over seven years. I am very
interested in African topics (esp. languages), and have lived in
Tanzania for six months and speak some Swahili. I haven't been to West
Africa yet, but hope to go there in not too long!
Now, onto my question. MediaWiki (the software that Wikipedia uses)
has an extension called Narayam
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam>, which makes it
possible to write in scripts other than Latin using a normal Latin
keyboard. This is very useful if you are on a computer with no
software support for your language, for example in an Internet cafe or
if you are in another country or whatever.
Since Akan and Ewe use some characters that are not standard in the
Latin alphabet, I think this could be a useful extension for these
Wikipedias as well. So that it can be tested, I have one question,
however: How is a proper Akan and/or Ewe keyboard set up?
According to this page on Omniglot
<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/akan.htm>, the Akan alphabet has two
"special" characters, É> and É", which are in place of the standard
Latin letters q and x. Is that they way it works on keyboards as well?
According to the same website
<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ewe.htm>, Ewe has even more special
characters, which I don't think fit on normal keyboards.
Also, my impression from East Africa is that there isn't really any
specific keyboard layout used. I have come across keyboards from
languages all over the world, though the usual setting is "US
English". Is it the same way in Ghana? In that case, how do you
normally type the special letters? Do you use some sort of combination
or substitution, like "3" for "É>", "C" for
"É"", or anything like
that? If any of you could provide this information I could create a
keyboard layout for it, and you can help test it.
--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by>
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