Ray Saintonge wrote:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern
Daylight Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
It is imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
that simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
settings.
Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
need a gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...
It would be wrong to impute motives to any of the speakers whose
language is not represented by a strong Wikipedia community.
Ok, perhaps I should clarify something here. I'm not talking about
native speakers, I'm talking about people who have some knowledge and
have access to native speakers when they go back to wherever they're
taking a break from...
In many respects I agree with both Danny and Gerard on
this.
"Developing regions" may have been an unfortunate choice of words, but
the differences that they have expressed seem like the sort of thing
that can easily be resolved through dialogue. We should indeed be
encouraging development in all languages, and development goes well
beyond word lists and languages. Having complete dictionary listings
for Tocharian or Beothuk is not going to bring those languages back to
life. Extensive dictionary listings for all the aboriginal languages of
Australia will do very little to bring those people onto the internet
and contributing to Wikipedia in their own languages.
Many of these languages were pre-literate until waves of Christian
missionaries went in and translated the Bible for them. Talk about
paternalistic!
... and they're Christian missionaries from various aid organisations.
NOW do you see why people have no desire to contribute? Attitudes like
yours, buddy.
--
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