[Foundation-l] Preservation of cultural diversity and minority languages

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Feb 8, 2008 7:43 PM,  <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> With reference to Upper, Lower, Middle, or Lost in Limbo Sorbian (or any
> other such language), while I quote from memory, the foundation's goal is to
> create reference works for people "in their own languages." In other words, as
> long as there is a viable body of speakers, it would merit a wikipedia and
> other  projects.

But if all Lower Sorbian speakers are also German speakers, then
German is just as much "their language" as Lower Sorbian is.
Presenting information in German to a group of people which all
understand German should satisfy this mission, regardless of what
other languages those people might also happen to know.

In cases where the speaking population of one language are a perfect
subset of the speaking population of another language, we should
always provide projects in the larger language, and never provide
projects in the smaller one. The only time we should provide projects
in both of two languages that perfectly overlap is when there is no
clear superset/subset relationship between them.

Noble-minded people who try to do all good to all people spread
themselves too thin and end up doing no good to anybody. We can't
pursue all just causes, and attempting to will dilute our core
mission, and will make us less effective at doing anything. A little
bit of focus and efficiency, while it means that we need to abandon
certain causes, will enable us to do more good to more people for more
time then the alternative.

--Andrew Whitworth