Hoi, The majority of the people that speak Bangla live in Bangladesh. So you got it wrong again.
Also when academics prefer English, you ignore my point. The point is that kids do better academically when they first learn to read and write in their mother tongue. Academic interests are academic at best when people learn to read and write. So yes, another language is for non-native English speakers more effective.
When we invest in issues that are particularly of relevance to the English language Wikipedia our money does not give us the return that an investment in other languages gives us.
Thanks, GerardM
On 10/23/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/23/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, There are some 100,000,000 people in Bangladesh, some 70,561,000
peoplein
India
...and the people in india with Internet connectivity clearly prefer the English Wikipedia.
Which isn't shocking, if we include second and third languages English is one of the most spoken languages in India, probably only second to Hindi.. and if we factor in literacy English is almost certainly #1.
We have heard multiple times from multiple experts in education in India that English is very effective. It's not clear that without substantially more interest in the other languages of india that the Wikipedias in those languages could ever be comprehensive enough to be effective educational tools.
Furthermore, if we were somehow successful at making a fantastic Wikipedia we'd be contributing to the intellectual isolation of the people that use it: English is the language of academia in India.
I dare you to explain how the preservation of a language can come at the expense of the people that need it.
If a language is widely used and needed it can't be dead. If a language is dying it isn't widely used and needed, nearly by definition.
I could as easily say that this imperialistic tendency to promote a language like English over others
comes
at the expense of bringing education to people.
I don't much care what languages we use. We should use what people want, and what we can effectively offer.
You have asserted that we should be preserving dying languages. My disagreement doesn't mean that I think we should promote English (or French, or..) if some other language would actually be more effective.
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