Ray Saintonge wrote: 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... ... and they're Christian missionaries from various aid organisations. NOW do you see why people have no desire to contribute? Attitudes like yours, buddy. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Ray Saintonge wrote: <*snip*> This is a little over the top in this observation. Ever since the Bible was translated into Latin, there has been a consistant attitude of trying to teach the concepts of Christian thought in the native language of the people who were recieving the message. In fact, none other than the words of Jesus himself, to "preach the gospel to every nation, kindred, tounge, and people" gives quite the justification to translate these words into as many languages as possible. While I will openly admit that this was not as widespread of a practice during most of the 1st Christian millenium, it certainly was a part of the Reformation and Protistant movement in terms of translating tracts and literature into as many languages as possible. When 19th Century (and even substantial 20th Century) missionary work came across cultures who had no written language of any kind, it became quite difficult to have these new cultures to have the opportunity to read the Holy Word. An interesting development occured when in some areas Christian worship services occured in an European language but everyday life occured in another. From a missionary point of view, these people who were professing to be converts to Chritianity were in fact living one life during the week and something completely different on Sunday. In an attempt to "democratize" the access to the teachings of Jesus, the Bible simply had to be translated into these languages that otherwise had no written form. This is hardly paternalistic, but rather the very purpose and being of the missionary work, and a desire to fulfill the direct command of Christ himself. If the language didn't have a written form, it became necessary to perform this missionary effort to create the written form in the first place. Jointly with this effort was also an attempt to preserve the history and cultures of these people with this newly created written language. In fact, I would dare say that this same missionary zeal that pushed these Christian missionaries into translating the Bible into as many languages as possible is largely continued through the efforts of Wikimedia projects and in particular Wikipedia. I know that it isn't necessarily a Christian POV that is being translated for Wikipedia, but you absolutely must acknowledge the roots of similar efforts coming from these Christians rather than demeaning and belittling honest positive conributions of well meaning people. That you may or may not agree with Christian thought is irrelevant in this situation, and if it wasn't for the substantial efforts to create a written form of many of these languages, there simply wouldn't be a written form at all. Since you bring up native American peoples, I would like to point out that the Cherokee nation in particular has had their language now for close to 200 years, was originally written to translate the Bible and admittedly to "Christianize" the Cherokee people. Still, this written form as acted as a cultural shield and has helped preserve the language in spite of enormous pressures to abandon the language. Indeed as with many other written language efforts, this has acted as a unifying force to draw the Cherokee people together. Unlike many of the other languages that I guess you are refering to here, Cherokee as a language has also developed independent of religious literature with rich traditions of secular literature. I would agree that a paternalistic attitude of condescension toward calling these effort (perhaps even viewed by some of the 19th Century missionary efforts you are refering to) of "helping primitive native peoples", but there were reasons to translate the Bible into these languages. BTW, for current efforts to translate the Bible into additional languages (and some efforts are being done even now), it costs in the neighborhood of roughly $2 million USD for each edition of the Bible. The groups that do these efforts (see http://www.ubs-translations.org/cms/index.php?about ) try to be very senstive to native cultures when these translations are done. Frankly, these individuals who go into a society and even attempt to create a syllabary for a language that otherwise has none are doing incredible and often thankless work. Rather than being critical of these efforts, they are indeed preserving these languages even if it is in POV religious context. These individuals are on the bleeding edge of linguistics studies, to be honest. -- Robert Scott Horning