One problem seems to be diacritics. Yoruba WP should have a diacritic thing below the edit box like Romanian WP, Navajo WP, or Minnan WP. Chances are, users' keyboards do not have the appropriate diacritics for writing the Yoruba language. Most will also not know how to type them using a Unicode editor.
Diacritics are very important to the writing of the Yoruba language because: 1) they represent tones, which can make distinctions in meaning, and 2) they represent distinctions between certain vowels which can also cause changes in meaning.
For example see http://yo.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A0%C3%ACj%C3%ADr%C3%AD%C3%A0 which is completely without diacritics.
Mark
On 11/11/06, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Forwarding this here because I thought this experiment on Yoruba might be of interest to some of you .. there've been many responses on the list already so no need to respond directly. However, those interested in the growth of African language Wikipedias will want to subscribe to http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: adewole lawrence Date: Nov 4, 2006 1:01 PM Subject: [afrophonewikis] for the attention of the editors of Yoruba Wikipedia To: afrophonewikis@yahoogroups.com
Yoruba scholars in Nigeria are being encouraged to contribute to Yoruba Wikipedia and they have started doing this but then, there are some problems (i) They do not know how to break the articles into pages. One or two of the articles are more than 32kb and they need to be broken into pages for easy editing. We would like the editors to help us break the articles into pages and advise us how we can do this. (ii) Some of the aricles are not placed where they should be. The article under FOLKLORE should be under FOLKTALE. The one under EDEE YORUBA should be under AWADA (HUMOUR). The one under ORILE-EDEE YORUBA should be under YORUBA PLACE NAMES and the one under LITERATURE should be under ORIKI: YORUBA DESCRIPTIVE POETRY. We would also like to be advised how titles are created for new articles. L.O. Adewole
Lawrence Olufemi Adewole Department of African Languages and Literatures Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria cellphone: 0803-471-4476
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-- Peace & Love, Erik
Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
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