[Wikimedia-l] "Wikipedia in the classroom" in Guarani language

[Osmar Valdebenito]

I totally agree with you. That's why we also had activities with native
speakers of Guarani, Aymara and Mapudungun in Buenos Aires teaching them
about Wikipedia and now we are giving another step. We are not saying that
with "Wikipedia in the classroom" everything is done.

We, as Iberocoop members, have discussed the approach with indigenous
languages in different opportunities (especially in Iberoconf 2012 in
Santiago) and we know that chapters should help the communities to develop
their own projects, and not replace them, considering none of us are native
speakers. Of course, I have learnt (in my case) some Mapudungun and I can
help editing, but it is not our goal. Wikimedia Venezuela has been doing a
great job with Wayuunaki speakers and also Wikimedia Mexico with different
languages (I'm not sure and probably Iván can correct me, but I think the
Yucatec was one of them). Wikimedia Chile contacted several Mapuche
organizations for the development of the Mapudungun Wikipedia and Wikimedia
Argentina has been doing the same in the past years.

Osmar Valdebenito G.



2012/12/16 M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

> I think an even better initiative would be to involve native speakers
> in writing articles and taking leadership positions at the Guarani
> Wikipedia. It is currently written exclusively by language
> learner-enthusiasts, although they do receive occasional help from
> Ateneo de Lengua y Cultura Guaraní. There are no native speaker admins
> either, as far as I am aware.
>
> This is a tragedy, considering Guaraní is the main language of
> Paraguay, it is official in two countries (Paraguay and Bolivia) and
> in some provinces in a third (Argentina) and widely used in Brazil as
> well.
>
> In fact, why do we never hear the fact that none of the Wikipedias in
> indigenous languages of the Americas are currently written or
> administered by actual native speakers of those languages (again, as
> far as I know, and with the exception of one native speaking former
> editor on the Navajo Wikipedia)? The one Wikipedia that has made
> promising progress towards breaking this unfortunate pattern is the
> Yucatec Wikipedia, which unfortunately has been kept ghettoized in the
> incubator by the overly restrictive policies enforced by a couple of
> members of Langcom, in spite of the community interest and
> participation in the project.
>
> Wikipedia will never take off in non-European minority languages if it
> is exclusively written and administered by outsiders.
>
> (I should add that many of the editors and administrators have done
> great work, and written lots of quality articles; in the case of the
> Navajo and Quechua Wikipedias, I know them to be competent,
> expert-level speakers of the languages, but unfortunately this is
> still not a viable replacement for the native speaker involvement - it
> is a good complement to it, but not a replacement)
>
> Can you imagine the Spanish Wikipedia written _only_ by people
> studying Spanish as a second language? Could it ever become a major
> reference work for native speakers, if that were the case?
>
> 2012/12/16, Osmar Valdebenito <osmar at wikimediachile.cl>:
> > This week, Wikimedia Argentina published the first edition of "Vikipetã
> > mbo'eha kotýpe" [1], "Wikipedia in the classroom" in Guarani, an
> indigenous
> > language spoken in Northern Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. It is the
> > first Wikipedia related publication made in an American indigenous
> > language.
> >
> > The goal of “Wikipedia in the classroom”, made originally in Spanish, is
> to
> > help teachers to understand what is Wikipedia, how it works and how they
> > can use it in an useful way. Most students already use Wikipedia so it is
> > really important that teachers know what to do.
> >
> > “Wikipedia in the classroom” is an initiative launched in 2010 by
> Wikimedia
> > Argentina with the support of different institutions, including the
> > Education portal of the Argentine government, educ.ar. They released an
> > special website about the project.[2] Wikimedia Argentina will print 500
> > booklets of the Guarani edition to be distributed in schools and other
> > educational institutions, and we expect to publish new editions in other
> > indigenous languages in 2013.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Osmar Valdebenito G.
> > Director Ejecutivo
> > A. C. Wikimedia Argentina
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vikipet%C3%A3_mbo%27eha_kot%C3%BDpe.jpg
> > [2] http://wikipediaenelaula.educ.ar/
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>
>
> --
> skype: node.ue
>
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