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//Many well educated people, people with a university level education are
effectively illiterate in their own language.//

//When our goal is to get more people involved in the Indic languages, we
can ask people to transcribe the scans of public domain books. We will be
providing them with a keyboard mapping, the fonts that show their language.
As these =93illiterates=94 recognise the characters and reproduce them
digitally, they learn not only to type their language they may even learn
to read.//

*I find the above lines not only very offending but also far from truth.
The people you see in conferences do not the represent the whole of
India. *There
exists a minority which did not learn mother tongues in their schools, but
majority of the Indians do learn to read, write, speak and understand their
mother tongues in schools. Most of the regional print and mass media are
very active and surpass the readership for English language media.

Except for technical and professional higher education, most of the studies
are still done in Indic languages. ( at least for Tamil )

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.

There are millions and millions of Indians who are versatile and are
dependent on their mother tongues for knowledge. Wikimedia should think how
to reach them directly.

Ravi

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Gerard,<br><br><br><div class=3D"gmail_quote"><blockquote class=3D"gmail_qu=
ote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex=
;"><div></div><div>The one thing I have come to understand is that many nat=
ive speakers of Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own lan=
guage. The combination of highly educated people being functionally illiter=
ate had me talking with many people.<br>
</div></blockquote><div><br>From <a href=3D"http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/=
11/28/7983/">http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/28/7983/</a><br><br>//Many w=
ell educated people, people with a university level education are effective=
ly illiterate in their own language.//<br>
<br>//When our goal is to get more people involved in the Indic languages, =
we=20
can ask people to transcribe the scans of public domain books. We will=20
be providing them with a keyboard mapping, the fonts that show their=20
language. As these =93illiterates=94 recognise the characters and reproduce=
=20
them digitally, they learn not only to type their language they may even
 learn to read.//<br><br><b>I find the above lines not only very offending =
but also far from truth. The people you see in conferences do not the repre=
sent the whole of India. </b>There exists a minority which did not learn mo=
ther tongues in their schools, but majority of the Indians do learn to read=
, write, speak and understand their mother tongues in schools. Most of the =
regional print and mass media are very active and surpass the readership fo=
r English language media.<br>
<br>Except for technical and professional higher education, most of the stu=
dies are still done in Indic languages. ( at least for Tamil )<br><br>If yo=
ur ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated minorit=
y English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make them contri=
bute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am not even sure =
if it fits inside Wikipedia&#39;s mission.<br>
<br>There are millions and millions of Indians who are versatile and are de=
pendent on their mother tongues for knowledge. Wikimedia should think how t=
o reach them directly.<br><br>Ravi<br><br><br> </div></div>

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