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

Tue Aug 29 00:49:48 UTC 2006

Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> 
>>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. 
>>>    
>>
>>Who is?  I have not seen this.
>>
>>  
>>
>>>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)?
>>>    
>>
>>I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world, 
>>simultaneously.  I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested 
>>in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
>>
>>I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or 
>>paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not 
>>represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
>>  
> 
> 
> I think the fear being expressed, or in any case the one I'll express, 
> is that there are a bunch of Americans and Europeans saying that we 
> ought to do such-and-such about African languages, or such-and-such to 
> change African societies for the better---basically, paternalistic 
> attitudes that the enlightened Westerners have arrived on their glorious 
> steeds of Information to fix the problems of Africa.  See also, 
> [[en:white man's burden]].
> 
> A non-paternalistic attitude would be to treat African languages like we 
> treat all other languages.  Even though quite a few Westerners are 
> interested in the subject of spreading information in China, for 
> example, the Chinese-language projects have been run by Chinese speakers.
> 
> -Mark

Nod.
There are a couple of things we can do, I think, without being 
paternalistic. It is simply to "tell them". To tell them about our 
projects. To tell them about "free content". To tell them how they can 
participate and develop their own language project.

And to make suggestions about how they could push more (maybe by paying 
an editor in chief, maybe by organising a conference, maybe by having 
advertisment on Wikipedia in a local journal, maybe by visiting a 
school). But then, I think that's their business to do what is needed 
once they have the cards in hand (the platform).

ant