[Foundation-l] Priorities

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Gregory Maxwell a écrit :
> On 10/23/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> There are some 100,000,000 people in Bangladesh, some 70,561,000 peoplein
>> India
> 
> ...and the people in india with Internet connectivity clearly prefer
> the English Wikipedia.

Sorry Greg, but this is probably biaised.
For most of them, they have Internet connectivity because they speak
English, so they have a better revenue, they work in IT, etc. and
localization in Indian languages is still difficult. So most people who
have Internet access use English.
This doesn't mean that overall people prefer English.

> Which isn't shocking, if we include second and third languages English
> is one of the most spoken languages in India, probably only second to
> Hindi.. and if we factor in literacy English is almost certainly #1.
> 
> We have heard multiple times from multiple experts in education in
> India that English is very effective.

Again this is quite biaised. The school with the best teachers, the best
equipment, etc., use English as a medium. So obviously students from
these schools have better results. It doesn't mean than English is more
effective than other languages as a medium.

All this doesn't mean that the aim of Wikipedia is to preserve
languages, but it helps quite a lot for some languages.
And I prefer to have the facts straight.

Reagrds,

Yann

> It's not clear that without substantially more interest in the other
> languages of india that the Wikipedias in those languages could ever
> be comprehensive enough to be effective educational tools.
> 
> Furthermore, if we were somehow successful at making a fantastic
> Wikipedia we'd be contributing to the intellectual isolation of the
> people that use it: English is the language of academia in India.
> 
> 
>> I dare you to explain how the preservation of a language can come at the
>> expense of the people that need it.
> 
> If a language is widely used and needed it can't be dead. If a
> language is dying it isn't widely used and needed, nearly by
> definition.
> 
>> I could as easily say that this
>> imperialistic tendency to promote a language like English over others comes
>> at the expense of bringing education to people.
> 
> I don't much care what languages we use. We should use what people
> want, and what we can effectively offer.
> 
> You have asserted that we should be preserving dying languages. My
> disagreement doesn't mean that I think we should promote English (or
> French, or..) if some other language would actually be more effective.

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