What to do with Gaulish ?

[Don Osborn]

Thanks Mark for bringing this up here and Frank for the explanation.

While writing about selected African languages in earlier postings I was
thinking (again) that we really do need input from experts in the languages
in question (not just in Africa). Personally I find that I must write pretty
categorically about some items relating to African languages but at the same
time wish there were people more formally specialized in linguistics and the
specific languages who could raise informed amendments, corrections,
objections, or alternative ideas.

Looking at Elizabeth's mail on the other list (thanks to her for raising the
issue there), I would concur with the specifics and spirit of her posting on
several points:
*I also look at Linguist list (Linglite) and some tech lists (including some
small ones I run) as well as African studies and international development
lists - that gets well beyond the scope of her letter, but what is similar
is the sense of witnessing parallel universes. 
*Re linguists and computer specialists, a number of people have observed in
the case of African languages at least that there is a lack of dialogue
between the two. (In fact, coming from a background in international
development, it really seems like the linguists are also generally out of
the loop when ICT4D/E projects are discussed there, but that's another
matter.)
*Outreach is needed. This is true in a number of areas, not just with
linguists, but they might be the first priority for discussion of language
tags (and a co-first priority when it comes to Unicode in Africa for
instance - one of their rare points in common is lack of understanding of
Unicode and its implications).

I will do my part as best as I can. I have recently passed on some
suggestions to the Mande Studies Association (MANSA) re Wikipedias and will
add a note about the questions concerning categories and tags for Manding
and Mande languages.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfrican Localisation project



> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Frank Ellermann
> Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 3:08 PM
> To: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Re: What to do with Gaulish ?
> 
> Michael Everson wrote:
> 
> > What is the context of this response?
> 
> A long thread about gaulish on the W3C I18N list, a linguist stated
> that the standards folks (incl. this list) do their work unrelated and
> without feedback from the professionals:
> 
> http://news.gmane.org/group/gmane.org.w3c.internationalization.general/
> thread=2278/focus=2315
> 
> Something went wrong with the references in Mark's X-Post.
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
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