[Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[Thomas Goldammer]

>
> To make those languages viable enough to survive -- much more work
> than just our is needed. I am sure that 10% of military budgets of the
> world countries for one year would preserve all languages, but that's
> the other issue. Basically, that's not our failure as Wikimedians, but
> failure of our civilization.
>

exactly. Well, saving languages is a very nice goal and would be
great. But it wouldn't help Wikimedia´s goals. A lot of languages will
be vigorously passed on to the children also still in 2050. So don't
care about them? Nope, the contrary. These are exactly the languages
in which a Wikipedia makes real sense. Many of them are small
languages with less than 100k speakers, but still, if the right
efforts are made, we could get those into Wikipedia business. But, we
would need a boatload of money (yes, why not taking it from the
military budgets - but who should hand it over to us ;) ) to go around
the world to the speech communities and explain them how they can do
it, and support them in doing it during the first years. The other
languages, and it's a big majority, won't be passed on to children in
2050 anymore (or are already not passed on). Why? Because people pass
to their children the language that will help them most in their life,
which is probably the language they have to know to be able to go to
school. And additionally, a low-prestige language is very unlikely to
be passed on to the next generation, and let's be honest, there are
lots of attitudes towards languages, just think about certain dialects
of your own language. ;) Only if we could make it that their own
heritage language is that one that helps them most in their coming
life and that has enough prestige to be treated as a treasure rather
than a burden, they would pass that one on to the next generation.

Th.