[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a Wikipedia Pr...

Mon Aug 28 00:26:55 UTC 2006

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I  
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for  
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely 
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not  
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66  
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and 
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20  
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>  
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African 
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik, 
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the 
> speakers of Swahili.
>  

This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.

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