Martin Benjamin wrote:
And here are my responses to your specific questions:
* Can some of Africa's entrenched economic
difficulties relate to
the fact that many of her people do not have access to literacy in
the languages they speak and use on a daily basis?
No, they are related to civil wars, food shortages, health and public
sanitation issues, and contitent
wide governmental corruption and resource exploitation, combined with
backwards racial
conflcits which perist into modern times, including religious conflicts
due to the influences
and battles between Islam and Christianity.
* How much of the lack of literacy in many
languages is related to
the lack of a systematic effort to produce written materials in
those languages?
If a people have no written language and rely on oral tradition, it's
like trying
to ice skate uphill. You will also find (as I have here with several
tribes) many groups have
religous taboos on writing down their languages.
* If a critical mass of written materials were
produced for a given
language, would it create the necessary foundation for widespread
literacy in that language among speakers of that language?
No. You need education programs in each area and immersion schools setup to
provide children from early ages access to materials. Adults won't learn
it, they are too busy
involved in the struggle to just survive day to dat realities.
* If speakers of a given language were to develop
literacy in that
language, rather than having to learn an entirely different
language (such as English or Arabic) in order to engage in written
communications (send emails, write blogs, read newspapers, get
commodity market and weather reports relevant to the crops they
grow, apply for jobs, evaluate the truth claims of politicians,
etc), might that literacy be a key to overcoming the continent's
persistent economic difficulties?
Most of these folks will have already been exposed to English. You would
need to identify English
bilingual speakers with one foot in each world to even be able to
communicate WHY this is important.
* Given the certified failure of print publishers
and government
agencies (colonial and post-colonial) to produce literacy
materials in most African languages during the past 150 years, and
the rapid success of the Wikipedia model in producing vast amounts
of knowledge material quickly, might the resources of the
Wikipedia world be a way to address the issues of creating
literacy materials for those languages?
Machine assisted translations. Wikipedia has succeeded largely in part
due to the young who have little or
no need to go to work every day using their time to contribute and build
it. Wikipedia is a phenomena of
the industrialized western yuppie culture (and very young folks) most of
whom have not yet flown the
nest.
* If One Laptop Per Child is indeed a foreseeable
reality, and if
Wikipedia is going to come prebundled, and if having literacy
materials in the language a child speaks is a key to the ultimate
success and usefulness of OLPC, isn't creating a good Wikipedia in
that child's language an issue of somewhat immediate concern?
One laptop per child won't address areas where people worry more about
getting
food to eat or dying of AIDS or some other disease than learning to read
and write.
* If any or all of the above, but also given the
slow pace of
African language Wikipedias to date, what have the barriers been
thus far, and how can those barriers be overcome in a timely and
systematic way?
literacy, access to MACHINE ASSISTED EDITING TECHNOLOGY.
Jeff
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