Hoi,
We know you and respect you. When your connections help us gain access to
PNG specialists it is EXACTLY the bias we are seeking by your being a
member :)
Thanks,
GerardM
On 10 February 2017 at 12:08, Oliver Stegen <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 publications and a large body of unpublished works about and in 389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.
>
>
>
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