Anthere wrote:
On the net, I found "Tumbuka is a Bantu language
spoken in Zambia, Malawi & Tanzania. There are a total of nearly 700,000 speakers in
Malawi, where it is spoken primarily in the northern part of the country. Within Zambia,
about 450,000 speakers are located mostly on the eastern side of the country. The balance
of the nearly 2,000,000 total speakers are in Tanzania. "
Well, Wikipedia is not an oral source, so the relevant figure is readers
rather than speakers. As far as I can tell from google, there are very
few readers of Tumbuka, because it is not taught in any schools in the
region---even those who speak Tumbuka at home read and write in a
different language. That makes the usefulness of a Tumbuka Wikipedia as
an information source potentially limited. Not that we shouldn't have
it, but it's not going to suddenly bring a wealth of information to
millions of people, because very few people can read the language.
-Mark
You are absolutely correct Mark, it probably wont make a huge difference :-) At least
now.
But possibly in the future, wikipedia (and in this case wiktionary) can also become an
oral resource with sound recording.
What it could make a huge difference with is little by little helping african people
become active on the net, appropriating it through websites such as ours, also improving
english articles on these cultures and countries (or any other languages they speak in
their country). Tiny bits can make huge waves on day :-)
That would be far than enough for me to support it.
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