[Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India

[Shiju Alex]

Sharing a news also (related to Mother language illiteracy).

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2008011357590300.htm&date=2008/01/13/&prd=th&


Shiju




On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>wrote:

> Ravi shankar said:
>
>> If your ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated
>> minority English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make them
>> contribute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am not even
>> sure if it fits inside Wikipedia's mission.
>>
>
>
> Yes. that is true.  I do not forsee such a thing happening for Indic
> wikis. :)
>
>
> Is Gerard is trying to convey the idea of *Mother Language illiteracy? *Remember
> by illiteracy of a language, we mean the inability *to read or write*(rather than speaking) that specific language. I must say Mother Language
> illiteracy is rising in Indian cities and in some states (for example,
> Kerala).
>
> In fact if you go through the discussions that I am sharing with you
> (about different language wiki communities), many Indic language
> wikipedians are also raising the same concern.
>
>
>
> Shiju
>
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>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
>> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of
>>> Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The
>>> combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me
>>> talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is
>>> possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as
>>> pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it
>>> must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning
>>> to read and write English already.
>>>
>>
>> Dear Gerard,
>>
>> I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here.
>>
>> Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but
>> not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so,
>> that is probably true - but is that what you mean?
>>
>> For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I
>> read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I
>> usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India
>> who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and
>> write in indic languages.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Bishakha
>>
>>
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>
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