Alright, that's great to hear – I'm very happy to be proven wrong about my pessimism. :-) My point about most languages having a very small number of speakers I think still stands, *but* there are plenty of bigger languages as well where the number of speakers would be enough for wiki projects, so consider my objection nullified. :-)
2017-02-10 12:08 GMT+01:00 Oliver Stegen <[email protected]>: > In response to the question of New Guinea languages: > SIL is probably the one organisation [1] working in most of those > languages, almost half of all in PNG alone, which includes over 2,500 > publications and a large body of unpublished works about and in 389 > languages [2]. Access to amenities including the internet is spreading fast > [3], and mobile penetration is at 50% [4]. So, I am actually rather > optimistic, not least as I'm aware of minority language activities in PNG > being vital and continuing to go strong. Whether that means we need an > additional New Guinea language expert, or whether it will be sufficient to > rely on my SIL contacts (which do include PNG), that's another question > which I refrain from answering here now as I may be perceived as biased on > that issue. But Jon Harald asked for correction if necessary, and I at > least felt the need to balance his outlook. I very much support the > promotion of Internet-based movements in PNG, and I believe it makes a lot > of sense. > > [1] http://www.silpng.org/ > [2] http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/show_lang.asp?by=langcode > [3] http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/news/papua-new-guinea%E2%80%99s- > internet-gaining-speed > [4] https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Papua-New-Guinea- > Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses > > On 10-Feb-17 01:28, Jon Harald Søby wrote: > > [...] > This might be nitpicking, but I don't necessarily agree that we should be > looking for New Guinea language specialists. Yes, I'm aware that there are > 1500 languages (¼ of the world's languages by some estimates) spoken in New > Guinea, but I don't think it makes sense for us to be giving too much > weight to that at this point. The vast majority of these languages are > spoken by small tribes who live in the middle of the forest, often lack > access to basic amenities, let alone the Internet, and whose languages have > never been written before. (I'm generalizing broadly now, and am no expert > in Papuan languages, so please correct me if I'm mistaken!) This is not to > say I wouldn't welcome any Papuan language specialists, I just think it > doesn't make sense to make that a priority for an Internet-based movement > like ours. But anyways, this is not very related to the point of this > thread. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Langcom mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom > > -- mvh Jon Harald Søby
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