Welsh people don't all speak English: I used to work with people from north Wales who couldn't speak a word of it. They /only/ spoke Welsh. Unusual, perhaps, but it happens.
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton Sent: 30 September 2011 13:05 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A little wiki "hacking"
On 30 September 2011 11:31, iain.macdonald@wikinewsie.org wrote:
There's a lot of discussion about Scots.... But what of Scottish Gaelic? That's a very distinct language and of real benefit to those who still
speak
it - though that number is diminishing.
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
I'd be inclined to say that Scots isn't really a separate language and Scottish Gaelic is too small to ever be a successful project, so we shouldn't really worry about either. If there are speakers of either language that want to do something, the chapter can support them through microgrants. I wouldn't advise a proactive approach by the chapter.
The main argument is that there is essentially no-one that speaks Scots or Scottish Gaelic that doesn't also speak fluent English. That means our efforts will have significantly more impact if we concentrate on English. (Welsh is substantially larger, so it might be worth reaching out to the Welsh community, even though they all speak English too.)
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