As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language
committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the
world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions
to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a
good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in
touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least
incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/2/24 M. Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never
made any
decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then
perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if
you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit
only from European countries, you will find a very different group of
opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is
certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and
linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our
benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of
the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population
lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the
world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a
member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite
people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from
Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in
many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown <lists(a)caseybrown.org>rg>:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic
<millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages
in
the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
committee
want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is
fluent
in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so
simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many
professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their
knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise,
their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one
Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but
many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish
languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an
expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically
useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in
different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys
having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the
language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages
aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the
"administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I
remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
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