[Wikipedia-l] Re: Q1 2005 Fund Drive over

[Mark Williamson]

I think that, as long as you are careful to say "even available in
minority languages" rather than "there are also versions in the other
major languages of China" (which they really are - all of the
languages I mentioned have over 1m speakers in China), and as long as
you don't mention Tibetan by itself.

On a side note, I forgot to include Mongolian.

Mark

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:00:14 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> 
> >Some people may not think it is notable, but to give a local example
> >drives home that Wikipedia is very diverse. If you are presenting in
> >China, please don't forget to mention that we have places for people
> >to build Wikipedias in Yi, Zhuang, Tibetan, Uyghur, and many other
> >languages.
> >
> >
> I don't disagree with this, but it's probably worth noting that
> languages are intimately connected to culture, nationalism, and
> politics, so when to mention what can sometimes be a sensitive issue.
> In China, in particular, promoting of regional languages is often
> connected to promoting regional political independence (i.e. secession
> from China, or at least increased autonomy), so needs to be done
> somewhat carefully so we don't become seen as a meddling US-based
> political organization that's trying to break apart China or something
> like that.
> 
> -Mark
> 
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