Quick update: * The Swahili Wikipedia now has >1000 articles (thanks to Ndesanjo Macha for this info). See http://sw.wikipedia.org/ * There is a debate about...
FYI, this short news item (below, after my windy comments) is from the SABC News (seen via a Google alert). The problem of training teachers how to teach in...
Here is an interesting passage from an article by Nigerian linguist Ben Elugbe (reference below). Note in addition to the remark about minority languages, the...
FYI, this event starts Monday. If anyone on this list is attending, it would be great to get any reports from you... DZO The 5th World Congress of African...
On June 29, 2006, Professor Kola Owolabi delivered his inaugural lecture at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, titled, 'Nigeria's Native Language Modernization...
Don you stated: "And in the case of Africa, most people however educated have had little or no formal instruction about the language that might in turn help...
Dear Femi, I've sent a link to your summary to Uwandiigbo and was asked whether one could read the whole paper. Do you know whether this is possible?...
Dear Anja, The whole paper is now in print and it should be out in about a month or two. It is being published by UI Press. I have a draft with me though. I...
Dear Femi, thanks for this information. I have not yet decided on a university for doing the MA yet. Sometimes, I wished I had only gotten one offer. ;-) Let...
Hi! I've just found http://globalrecordings.net where you can listen to many recordings of Gospel related texts, songs etc. in many different languages, ...
Hi Anja, Thanks for this. There seems to be a fair amount of material there, though I found I had to click around to find it. Use of audio content in diverse...
Thank you Lawrence, for keeping us informed on this matter. I am glad to hear that Prof. Owolabi’s paper has been published. It is helpful to keep ...
This issue - the language(s) used, recorded, or even admitted in the justice systems and the administration of justice in its fullest sense is one that has a...
Hi Don, I too think that recordings are very helpful. Just text will not tell you how to pronounce phrases. That's why we are trying to include recordings in...
Dear Friends, Do I need to be a native or fluent speaker of a language in order to start documenting and describing it?What is the difference between...
I am finalizing an early draft of proposal to adopt a custom key layout for Somali, based on QWERTY keyboard. It is an early draft, and I would like to hear...
Hi Jama and thank you for this information. Is your work related at all to the old Somali wordprocessor by SomiTek called "Hikaadiye"? I see from the...
Thanks Anja for these references. I think we'll see a lot more in the next few years. Some of us have discussed how ICT can facilitate not only greater...
Hi Hussein, This is a big question and I am not expert enough to give you any definitive answer but here are a few quick thoughts: 1. Some level of skill is...
I came across this in researching something else, and thanks to a scan, am passing it on. It comes from Pierre Alexandre's _Languages and language in Black...
I should just add my voice--that WYSIWYG orthographies (nice phrasing, Don) are probably the greatest obstacle to writing African languages. You get the ...
Hi Don, ... I wonder if it is really necessary to have an orthography that can be used to write all varieties of a language. German for example, which is much ...
Hello Don, ... No, our work is not related to old Hikaadiye software. I see from the description that it substitutes digraphs for 3 letters not ... Yes, I have...
Dear Paa Kwesi, no accents and no sub-lines? I think that would create too much ambiguity in Yoruba. The 1974 official orthography, the most recent one I am...
Ah, bien. Responding to the second question first (one of the kasahorow newsletters was dedicated to this issue--http://kasahorow.org/magazine/1July2006). ...
