[Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

[Ray Saintonge]

Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>  
>
>It's surprising that Bengali Wikipedia didn't start yet. There are probably 
>more than 200 millions people speaking Bengali, although I don't how many 
>among these have Bengali as their monther tongue (190M according to 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_language, 207M according to other 
>sources). And Bengali people have also a strong reputation for cultural 
>awareness, and the Bengali language has a long tradition of poetry and 
>literature.
>
The Nobel Prize (1913) winner Tagore wrote in Bengali, though probably 
mostly for those works that were available in English at the time.  I 
understand that there far more of his works that have never been 
translated.  Tagore died in 1941, so his works are essentially all in 
the public domain based on the life plus 60 law that prevails for India.

>Each of Assamese, Burmese, Gujarati, Kannada, Khmer, Nepalese, Oriya, Panjabi, 
>Pashtu, Sindhi, and Telugu have more than 10 millions speakers. However most 
>of these speakers have a poor Internet connectivity at the best. So it just a 
>matter of time when Internet connections become easily available in these 
>parts of the world.
>
These are probably langiages that we would really like to serve.  
Gujarati, Punjabi and Pashtu all have significant diasporas where there 
are people that are in a better position to take the initiative.  Here 
in the Vancouver area the Punjabi Sikhs are one of the largest immigrant 
communities.  Maybe I should enter into promotional discussions with 
some of them..

Another advantage that is available for the Asian languages is an 
established written language.  This is not the case for most African or 
native American languages.  It's just a matter of time before the Asians 
get it together.

Ec