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.

If your ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated minority English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make them contribute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am not even sure if it fits inside Wikipedia's mission.

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Dear Gerard, I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here. Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so, that is probably true - but is that what you mean? For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and write in indic languages. Cheers Bishakha _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Ravi shankar said: Yes. that is true. I do not forsee such a thing happening for Indic wikis. :) Is Gerard is trying to convey the idea of *Mother Language illiteracy? *Remember by illiteracy of a language, we mean the inability *to read or write*(rather than speaking) that specific language. I must say Mother Language illiteracy is rising in Indian cities and in some states (for example, Kerala). In fact if you go through the discussions that I am sharing with you (about different language wiki communities), many Indic language wikipedians are also raising the same concern. I guess my point is to distinguish between illiteracy and non-use or low

Hi Gerard, On Wednesday 30 November 2011 06:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote: I think the problem may be with the phrase "effectively illiterate". One term we use here a lot is functional illiteracy, but (like with the word illiteracy) it refers to a very specific problem, a developmental education problem. I, for instance, also do not recognise myself in your email. My mother tongues are Kannada and Telugu, and I speak a little Tamil and Hindi. I would describe myself as illiterate in Tamil, but literate in the other three languages. At home, for instance, I speak to my family mainly in English, and only sometimes in Kannada and Telugu. But, also, I'm one of the convent-educated people that Ravi wrote about earlier, and the language I am most comfortable with is English. I don't regularly read or write in Kannada, Telugu or Hindi, but I can - and I certainly use these languages regularly in speech. As Ravi pointed out earlier, I'm a minority and certainly not the core target of Indic language Wikipedias (and probably should not be). Everyone is comfortable with one language or another, and it's certainly true that most people in India (most middle-class, internet-accessing people even) are most comfortable reading, writing and speaking their mother tongues than not. This is best evidenced by media; in print, radio, television, and film; where the Indian-language media outstrips English-language media hugely, in terms of either readership or revenue. Cheers, Achal https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

*One of the reasons why these people are so relevant to me is that they are part of the top of the pyramid that is our communities. They are the people who work on our technology. We need people who are technically capable and interested in working on MediaWiki. We need them as part of our language communities because their effort has the ability to enable so many more people. We need people to work on our fonts, our keyboard methods, automatic transliteration .... It is not only the WMF Localisation team but also the language communities themselves that have to work towards the goal of making any language / your language as easy to edit as English.* As far as Tamil is concerned, this isnt true. You have scratched not even a tiny portion of whatever pyramid you might be looking for. Again your assumption is based on a sample size of what 50-100 that showed up at the Mumbai hackathon? (a place that is 2000 km from where Tamil speakers live in India). How hard have you tried to find other people who fit your description - people who know Tamil and are interested in working on Mediawiki?. Please stop generalising India from a single visit and meeting 100 people. This is extremely dangerous and will result in massive wastage of time because of wrong understanding of the ground situation. On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Hoi, - You agree with me that these people exist. - The Malayalam Wikisource is getting more attention then the Malayalam Wikipedia - It is relatively easy to learn to read the script. - Having native speakers type text that they could decipher is something they can do if they choose - Everybody benefits when more literature is transcribed

So I feel like there may be three or more categories of persons for each language: -Speakers who read and write in that lang -Speakers who don't read and write in that lang (non or low users) -Speakers who don't know how to read and write in that lang (illiterate, although I don't like the word)

And agree with Ravi that it would be hard to get both those who are not literate in a language or low users of it to contribute in that language. For example, I would be reluctant to contribute in the languages I speak, but don't write or read in everyday, even though I am technically literate in them.

You need to work with someone who knows the language to the purest of its form, knows it in and out, and also knows technology. I doubt you'd've come across MANY of those at either WCI or the Hackathon.

>*Gerard is trying to understand Indian culture in good faith. He has made

The aggressive/offended tone in a couple of posts on this thread distresses me. I humbly request that all respondents may please tone down any agression you may feel. Gerard is trying to understand Indian culture in good faith. He has made some assumptions that he is keen to explore. May I request that we please discuss maturely without getting offended? We need to not only AGF but be CIVIL also. The same points can also be made politely. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

made some assumptions that he is keen to explore. May I request that we please discuss maturely without getting offended? We need to not only AGF but be CIVIL also.* Unfortunately Gerard's attempt at understanding resulted in a official wikimedia blog post and might result in WMF taking a path that has a potential to damage indic wikis badly. He has written this from his position as a WMF employee. If tomorrow this translates this into official WMF policy, we cant stop the clock back. We know this from previous experience from the i18n team. On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Ashwin Baindur &lt;ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

That is a good thought implied by you, Sodabottle. Perhaps, WMF would like to discuss their proposed initiatives with affected communities before they announce them. Just as a ground check rather than depending only on one's experiences. Like a last check of a compass before walking on a certain bearing so to say.

Ashwin, On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Ashwin Baindur &lt;ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Every time there is a difference of opinion, some one starts this be CIVIL message. I don't feel anything un-CIVIL in anyone's message. So, please don't distract the TOPIC. Srikanth, //You need to work with someone who knows the language to the purest of its form, knows it in and out, and also knows technology. I doubt you'd've come across MANY of those at either WCI or the Hackathon.// While I agree with your view that even people not well versed in one language can donate their technical skills, it is important that the project as a whole takes in to account the views of people who know the language well. For example, a year back a wrong proposal was sent to Unicode consortium that wanted Grantha script being encoded in Unicode but at the expense of damaging Tamil language in long term. The Central Government passed it to Unicode consortium and it was about to approve it. Only at the last moment could we intervene and after months of discussion and wasting precious hours by both Sanskrit scholars and Tamil scholars + Technocrats, the proposal was held. If only Unicode consortium or Central Government had asked for the opinion of learned scholars of language, this situation could have been avoided. So, while lack of proficiency in a language need not be an impediment for technical contribution, we should not assume that it is enough for projects of varying nature. Ravi _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Please help me understand. The Grantha script is not the same as the Tamil script and it is not used to write Tamil right ? But even so; how can characters in a SCRIPT that are not used in a language damage that language ??

I do assume that you agree that the Grantha script should be included in Unicode.

Hi All, What many of us are sharing here are personal experiences, anecdotes from one section of the community pyramid that Gerard mentioned. This can only lead to inaccurate inferences about Indic languages. So, let's do some objective analysis: Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India , India's literacy rate is 74.04% in 2011. As I have no practical experience of education systems in other states, let me take the example of Tamilnadu which has a literacy rate of 80.3%. The 19.7% illiteracy rate is a social issue and let's ignore it for this analysis. This example can very well be related with other states and India as a whole. Tamilnadu had three educations systems mainly: * *State board ( Majority of the students are enrolled in this and most pursue education through Tamil as a medium of instruction*. *Even for English medium students, learning Tamil as a language is mandatory for 10+2 years* ). Most of the government schools and government aided schools fall under this category. You can refer www.ssa.tn.nic.in/Docu/GenEduStat.pdf for the number of schools in Tamilnadu operating under government, government aid and private sector. Except for few cities, government schools are the majority. * Matriculation, ICSE and other boards ( Medium of instruction is English but most study Tamil as a language for 10+2 years). From this year, this system is abolished and merged with state board's uniform syllabus. * CBSE - Only a minority of schools are in this system. Medium of instruction is English and a good number of people do study Tamil as a language for 10 years. So, all these people can read, write, understand and speak Tamil and are functionally literate in their mother languages. Even if you assume that some studied other languages instead of Tamil in matriculation or CBSE syllabus, it is still a minority and can't exceed 10% by any means. * If you take the case of Srilanka, where Tamil is also an official language, 99% of the native Tamils complete their study in government schools with Tamil as their medium of instruction. So, they are almost 100% literate in their mother languages. * I am sure that similar trends and statistics can be observed for other Indic languages. Ashwin, Thanks for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement1.svg…. As you can see from the stats above, I do refute the central point here as it is totally wrong. Being offended by it is my personal expression and doesn't lack civility or make judgments about the one who posted the inferences. If we do not raise our concern for valid issues, India will continue to be seen as a country of snake charmers. Shiju, I am aware that mother language illiteracy is a raising problem in Indian cities. But, as Bala said it is a social problem and out of Wikimedia's mission. *Indic language projects are for the people and by the people who primarily gain and share knowledge in those languages* and their percentage is huge. Gaining readership / contribution from the minority English comfortable audience should not be a priority and it will not be worth the effort. The problem mentioned by many Indic language Wikipedians is a bit different. Since, many of the present day internet accessing Wikipedians do have a city / middle class / English educated background, they are at loss to write about different subjects in an encyclopedic quality. But, that doesn't mean that they are proficient in English writing either as you can witness from IEP. This is something to do with the quality and policy of higher education in our country. But, this doesn't mean by anyway that Indians are functionally illiterate in their own languages to the extend of not knowing to read and write. Gerard, Here are some scenarios: * People who know English and an Indic language well, know about Indic language projects and still contribute in only one language. Nothing much can be done to motivate them to switch the contributions. If they decide to do it by themselves, it is huge WIN. * People who know English and an Indic language well but do not know about Indic language projects. It should be our highest priority to spread awareness about Indic language projects to these people because they can bring great experience from English Wikipedia. We do have the privilege of having few contributors like them and their roles are phenomenal in shaping the community. * People who know only the Indic languages very well but do not know about Wikipedia. It should also be our highest priority to spread awareness about Wikipedia to these people. The moment they know that such a thing exists, they will jump on it because people are so hungry for knowledge in their own language. If you would like to know how we know this: We did a 3 day long Tamil Internet workshop practically for thousands of people during a language conference last year. People were so happy to know that they could read, write, search in their own languages. * People who know English only and contribute in En Wiki or MediaWiki. It is good to be in touch with them to share best practices, technical knowledge but do not expect content contributions from them. Even people who learned Indic languages for 10+ years in schools are finding WP:COMPETENCE to be of very high standard. //*One of the reasons why these people are so relevant to me is that they are part of the top of the pyramid that is our communities. They are the people who work on our technology. We need people who are technically capable and interested in working on MediaWiki. We need them as part of our language communities because their effort has the ability to enable so many more people. We need people to work on our fonts, our keyboard methods, automatic transliteration ....// *Most of the early contributors to Indic language projects have a background in software / tech industry and are fairly competent to take part in RFC, Bugzilla. So, you should have no problem reaching out to respective communities in their village pumps to ask for their inputs. Ultimately, it is only the community that is going to use it so better ask it in advance. Also, please do not be of the opinion that a mere capability to read and write by self learning is enough to decide on languages. Indic language scripts and their grammar can be very complex and any tool designed without understanding this will create problems. (Example: Unicode problems in Malayalam, Tamil ) So, as Bala suggested you do need to identify capable partners from language side. To start with the community is a good start. Regarding Grantha script, here is a long story short: Many world languages had their own script first but many have converted to Roman script now. Many Indic languages had their own script. But now most of them have adopted Devanagari script. Tamil belongs to Dravidian family of languages which is very different from Devanagari. So, the ancient Tamils used the Grantha script to write Sanskrit. Grantha script has most of the sounds of Tamil but not all. The recent Unicode proposal improvised the existing Grantha script to include more characters that represent Tamil sound. The real intention as expressed by the proposal was to use Grantha script to write both Grantha and Tamil together which will in long term make sure that Tamil script is lost and project Tamil as a subset of Grantha and in effect Indo European language. Not only was this malicious but it was against the fundamental grammar of both the languages. It is this proposal that has been held. Tamils are not opposing Grantha being encoded in Unicode as it is with the original characters. If you need more clarification on this, we can discuss outside the list. Thanks, Ravi _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l