Hoi,
I have been privileged to have been at the Wikiconference India, the Mumbai
hackathon and the Pune translation sprint. For me personally it was great
to see the activity in the many communities. I have learned a lot and I am
sure there is much more for me to learn.
The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of
Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The
combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me
talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is
possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as
pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it
must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning
to read and write English already.
I wrote on the Wikimedia blog some of the points I came up with. What I
would like from you is your comment.
Thanks,
Gerard
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/28/7983/