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,
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, 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,
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
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