In response to the question of New Guinea languages:
SIL is probably the one organisation [1] working in most of those
languages, almost half of all in PNG alone, which includes over 2,500
publications and a large body of unpublished works about and in 389
languages [2]. Access to amenities including the internet is spreading
fast [3], and mobile penetration is at 50% [4]. So, I am actually rather
optimistic, not least as I'm aware of minority language activities in
PNG being vital and continuing to go strong. Whether that means we need
an additional New Guinea language expert, or whether it will be
sufficient to rely on my SIL contacts (which do include PNG), that's
another question which I refrain from answering here now as I may be
perceived as biased on that issue. But Jon Harald asked for correction
if necessary, and I at least felt the need to balance his outlook. I
very much support the promotion of Internet-based movements in PNG, and
I believe it makes a lot of sense.
[1]
http://www.silpng.org/
[2]
http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/show_lang.asp?by=langcode
[3]
http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/news/papua-new-guinea%E2%80%99s-internet…
[4]
https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Papua-New-Guinea-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broa…
On 10-Feb-17 01:28, Jon Harald Søby wrote:
[...]
This might be nitpicking, but I don't necessarily agree that we should
be looking for New Guinea language specialists. Yes, I'm aware that
there are 1500 languages (¼ of the world's languages by some
estimates) spoken in New Guinea, but I don't think it makes sense for
us to be giving too much weight to that at this point. The vast
majority of these languages are spoken by small tribes who live in the
middle of the forest, often lack access to basic amenities, let alone
the Internet, and whose languages have never been written before. (I'm
generalizing broadly now, and am no expert in Papuan languages, so
please correct me if I'm mistaken!) This is not to say I wouldn't
welcome any Papuan language specialists, I just think it doesn't make
sense to make that a priority for an Internet-based movement like
ours. But anyways, this is not very related to the point of this thread.