[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
It is an irrelevant question. Research has shown that kids that learn to
write in their mother tongue first will do better academically. As our aim
is to provide educational content, it makes a difference to be aware of
this. When people apply to start a project in a language new to the WMF, it
is accepted under certain criteria. The criteria do not consider that there
is a finite number of languages that we support. Otherwise we might have had
to prevent new projects in the past because they would not fit in your
minimum number of languages. I am afraid that the aim of your question is to
maximise the number of languages that the WMF supports.

So I disagree where you say that it is an important question I would even
suggest that the languages that do not have a big reach do not cost us much
but have an inverse value to their cost. You may find that as a resource
they are of an extreme value. In my opinion good information in more
languages makes what we do more valuable not less valuable.
Thanks.
     GerardM

On Jan 23, 2008 5:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> What is the minimum number of languages must you write in to
> effectively communicate with 99.9999% of all the world's literate
> people?
>
>
> Note that I'm asking 'effectively communicate' not 'communicate in a
> language historically spoken by the ancestors of each person' or other
> interpretations.  Well understood and comfortably used second and
> third languages are acceptable.
>
> I think I vaguely know an answer to this, but I'd like a good citation
> so that I will not be called a bigot by the sort of people who think
> we must support 25,000 'languages' in order to support the world.
>
> Ideally I'd like to know the number of people reached as a function of
> supporting the N top languages.
>
> This seems like a simple and important question which others should
> have asked and answered definitively long ago, yet I can't seem to
> find a good reference. It also seems to me to be the sort of question
> which should play an important role in the foundation's long term
> resource allocations.
>
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