On 30 September 2011 13:04, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so
much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good
encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers)....
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps
revitalise the language.
I have to admit (from a completely personal viewpoint) that this sounds
like a reason _not_ to support minority language Wikipedias. I personally
much prefer the trend towards more people speaking a single language, or set
of main languages, rather than encouraging more small niches of people
speaking their own language.
I'd tend towards the opposite viewpoint; personally I think contributions in
particularly rare languages are particularly valuable, and that linguistic
(and hence cultural) diversity is important in stopping the whole world
ending up dull, identical and boring.
But thinking about what Wikimedia UK ought to do, rather than the more
abstract point, I would argue that since we represent the whole UK, we ought
to at least aspire to doing work in all the languages spoken in the UK.
Chris