[Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[Lodewijk]

As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language
committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the
world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions
to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a
good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in
touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least
incorporate the knowledge.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

2011/2/24 M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

> To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any
> decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then
> perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if
> you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit
> only from European countries, you will find a very different group of
> opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is
> certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and
> linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our
> benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of
> the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population
> lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the
> world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a
> member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite
> people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from
> Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in
> many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
>
> 2011/2/23, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org>:
> > On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>> One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
> languages
> >>> in
> >>> the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
> >>> committee
> >>> want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is
> >>> fluent
> >>> in one or more Asian languages?
> >>
> >> In principle yes, but... [1]
> >>
> >> Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so
> >> simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many
> >> professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their
> >> knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise,
> >> their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one
> >> Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but
> >> many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish
> >> languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an
> >> expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically
> >> useless.
> >
> > Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in
> > different languages when they need to?  I seem to recall you guys
> > having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the
> > language before they are created.
> >
> > So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages
> > aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the
> > "administrative committee" at this time.  At least that's how I
> > remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
> >
> > --
> > Casey Brown
> > Cbrown1023
> >
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>
>
> --
> skype: node.ue
>
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