On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 5:37 AM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
I cannot cite anything, but there should be studies that show that even though most people are "bilingual" or reported as "bilingual" in their regional language and another major language, they are more comfortable in getting education in their regional language.
I've not followed the referenced studies, but from about page 27 http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED540509.pdf ("Why and How Africa Should Invest in African Languages and Multilingual Education: An Evidence- and Practice-Based Policy Advocacy Brief") claims this.
This and maybe others are citations in Shaver, Lea, Copyright and Inequality (February 18, 2014). Washington University Law Review, Forthcoming; Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Research Paper No. 2014-3. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2398373 a large part of which is a case study of "book famine" in "neglected languages" of South Africa. I found the paper compelling, so much so that I read it aloud for those who prefer listening https://archive.org/details/LeaShaverCopyrightAndInequality(the paper is CC-BY) and blogged about it at http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2014/02/27/shaver-copyright-inequality/
The paper struck me as a validation of Wikimedia's language efforts so far, and an indication that these are undervalued -- I mean from a perspective recognizing their welfare contribution, not necessarily in terms of Wikimedia resources, of which I'm largely ignorant -- but despite my ignorance, maybe such valuation ought to encourage even more audacious language work, in the Wikimedia movement or nearby. I made some pedestrian suggestions in the blog post above, but let me highlight one that is pure fantasy born of my ignorance:
Could recognition of the value of neglected languages provide an impetus for a new and large effort toward free software machine translation? Little progress has been made thus far, perhaps in part because some proprietary services such as Google Translate are gratis, and work for most non-neglected languages. Could redoubled effort to support neglected languages in Wikimedia projects (Wikisource translations might be especially relevant) and free/open source software projects help provide needed parallel corpora?
I'm pretty sure that there
are such cases, and they should be given priority. Projects that are focused on language revitalization per se should be given less priority when resources are limited, even though it breaks my heart to say this.
Makes sense to me.
Mike