
The many languages missing from the internet - throw0101a
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200414-the-many-lanuages-still-missing-from-the-internet
======
ARandomerDude
The world has always had a handful of linguae francae. Greek, Aramaic, Latin,
English (Python, JavaScript), etc. each serve(d) valuable purposes. This
article seems to cast standardized communication in a negative, borderline (if
not outright) discriminatory light, which struck me as odd.

~~~
pjc50
A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily
written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those.

It's very easy for native English speakers to say English should be the only
language because it has only upsides for them, and they need not give up
anything, and they have never been coerced into using it. Whereas I suspect
99% of people who say things like "we don't need UTF-8, the world can be
ASCII-only" would go absolutely bananas if they woke up tomorrow and found
that HN was now a mandatory-Mandarin forum.

Some minority languages were actively suppressed during the colonialism of the
19th and 20th centuries. It was part of the point of the "residential schools"
system of Canada, Australia and elsewhere: take children away from their
parents and beat their language out of them.

A few languages have managed to go from repressed to national language status:
Irish, Hebrew, probably others.

~~~
DeathArrow
>A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily
written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those.

I don't see how me writing a tech article in English or my own language means
abandoning others "culture, literature (not necessarily written!)".

Am I required to learn 7000 languages?

~~~
pjc50
It doesn't and you're not. That would obviously make no sense.

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DeathArrow
I find it funny. In my small country, progressives prefer the English language
and borrowing customs from the West because they think maintaining our own
identity, our customs, our local food, our traditions, our culture, our
language and our identity as people is something "conservative", "subversive"
and "reactionary".

Meanwhile, progressives in English speaking countries think the contrary is
true.

~~~
Kaiyou
Progressives hate what they have, so they want to change things.
Unfortunately, they never seem too concerned whether the changes improve the
overall situation or not. Conservatives love what they have or had, so they
want to keep things as they are or go back to the way things were.
Unfortunately, they too aren't looking at the overall situation.

It seems both camps are emotionally attached to their positions not being
capable of considering that they are wrong about something. To err is human
and so it is to think to be always correct in the important matters, I guess.

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wink
Obviously I'm not part of a real minority language but I've tried to use my
software in English over German for many years just because it's a lot easier
to search for error messages.

OK, maybe I'm just a pessimist, but some real reasons (if you understand the
language well enough) is that English is usually the original and so the
localization can be ok or bad, but it's usually not better than the original.
And as I said, this is German and not some language spoken by just a few
people.

That said, I'd love to know more about the generic impression of how well
localization works for Spanish or Russian, languages with a lot more speakers.
I suppose with UTF-8 it's at least only a few mojibake errors and not total
mayhem like in the ASCII times...

And no, I'm not arguing other languages should not be on the internet but for
technical stuff (and news) I somehow really prefer English, maybe it's because
I've been hanging around online and in chatrooms in English for too many
decades.

~~~
Majestic121
I've been doing the exact same with French for the past few years : you manage
to find a lot of decent quality stuff in French overall, but as soon as you
need to look up GitHub issues or stack overflow answers, using French is a
clear issue.

~~~
Kaiyou
Interestingly enough, while using the Internet, learning English came
naturally, but I don't really see a point of learning other languages. I
wonder why that is.

Maybe the benefits are just too deeply hidden or there aren't enough benefits.
Possibly there is a bias in search engines that enables the hiding of
resources in other languages. (While they are quite persistent to offer me
results in the language of the country I'm residing in, despite doing all my
searches in English.)

~~~
wink
Maybe my view is skewed by the fact (well, I think it is so) that I learn
languages a lot faster by speaking or surrounding myself with them. Studying
at home simply does not work for me. I love languages, but I'd prefer to be
fluent before using them for important stuff.

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janandonly
Some website make an effort te be in as many languages as possible.

Check jw.org, it's in 1017 languages !

~~~
ibudiallo
This is impressive. I clicked on that link to show you that my language isn't
there. I don't even know how it is possible. The whole website is available in
Pular! (Aka fulani / fulfulde / etc)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20702404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20702404)

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DeathArrow
When I am addressing to my home folks, I write in my native language.

When I am addressing to an international audience, I am writing in (poor)
English because it is the lingua franca of the world now, pretty much like
latin was 1000 years ago.

~~~
Baeocystin
>because it is the lingua franca of the world now

One of the characteristics I love about English the most is the wanton,
shameless adoption of not just words but entire phrases into the lexicon.
'Frankish Tongue', nah lingua franca it is. 'long time no see' is another
favorite example. Ungrammatical in English, direct word-for-word translation
from Mandarin? Sure, come on in, the water's fine. No one bats an eye.

~~~
Kaiyou
No, English isn't the weird one, French is. All languages except for French
just adopt phrases from other languages. But for French they couldn't just use
"computer" or "PC", like pretty much every other language out there. They had
to invent their own word: l'ordinateur, if I remember correctly. And they do
this with every foreign word.

~~~
Baeocystin
French certainly does take it to extremes. I get the feeling (I don't live
where French is spoken often, so I mostly interact with it online, so I could
be mistaken) that most people ignore what the Académie Française has to say on
the matter, though.

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bmn__
M. Á. Oxlaj Kumez: I have no sympathy for you. You play the victim and
complain ceaselessly to foreign journalists. Be the change you want to see in
the world!

Let's imagine a different universe where the interviewee can proudly recount
his achievements:

• Added a megabyte of Kaqchikel text content on the Web.

• Contributed a 1st party Kaqchikel keyboard layout to Xkb and a 3rd party
layout to Android and Windows.

• Published a free to use Kaqchikel dictionary and spell checker.

• Worked with the Linux user groups in the four biggest cities to add a
Kaqchikel locale pack to KDE, and spin a variant of an existing popular distro
that comes with Kaqchikel out of the box.

• Distributed ten thousand kits to convert Mesoamerican Spanish keyboards into
Kaqchikel.

• Found like-minded individuals and raised funds and coordinated efforts
through the Kaqchikel resource centre at the university in Guatemala City.

• Lobbied the government to give indigenous languages equal status under the
law.

None of this is particularly technically challenging: Kaqchikel is written in
Latin.

~~~
kome
sorry, but pointing at a problem is the right way to go. You are basically
angry he is not a technologist. but that's more your problem than his problem.

Also: "Oxlaj Kumez is working with other activists to create a version of
Wikipedia in Kaqchikel Mayan, as well as a translated version of Mozilla’s
Firefox web browser."

So, he tries to do whatever he can. And perhaps he has also a life and a real
job.

I didn't know him and i have no axe to grind. i just find you reaction very
weird and overly aggressive.

~~~
bmn__
> You are basically angry […] i just find you reaction very weird and overly
> aggressive.

False, you chose to interpret my post that way.

> not a technologist

This is relevant to two points out of seven, both of which he could just
delegate and oversee.

I am disappointed in the substandard level of discourse you bring into this
thread. The site rules prevent me from speaking my mind any further, so I'm
out of here.

~~~
kome
thanks :)

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Hokusai
I like that the article present two different points. One is that the Internet
is a reflection of the socioeconomic reality of the world. Languages with
less, or just poorer speakers are less represented. The lack of representation
causes a feedback loop that also makes access information harder for poorer
communities. Being aware of this reality helps us to understand the challenges
that less connected societies have to work with.

The other important point, is to look forward on how the Internet can help to
preserve languages for future generations. We are in an unique place were we
can save human culture for future generations to study.

I know the feeling from my travels thru China. I was able to access Internet,
but the language barrier was always present. It was an interesting experience
to see how many non-English speakers experience the Internet.

~~~
Kaiyou
What's the point in preserving failed cultures? What are the benefits we can
gain from preserving them?

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Barraketh
Relatedly, I'd like to plug Wikibabel
([http://www.wikibabel.com/](http://www.wikibabel.com/)). It's translating
wikipedia from English to Swahili, with hopefully more languages to follow.

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red-indian
I've found the lang attribute and :lang pseudo-class to be pretty useful in
publishing for private tribal use documents in my (critically endangered)
language. Unfortunately there isn't any standard way of distinguishing between
the various scripts/orthographies, so we've extended the language names for
that purpose.

Our work isn't listed on any of these pages about which indigenous languages
are on the internet because we don't want it to be, these pages are for tribal
citizen use only. So, there may be a lot more written languages in use somehow
than the author believes. But who knows.

~~~
saagarjha
Would you mind sharing what language this is?

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Kaiyou
This is silly. I don't write in my native language because I want everyone to
understand what I have to say. If you want to be part of the conversation,
just learn English. It's really, really easy. I never even spend any effort on
learning the language.

~~~
rvp-x
I make an active effort to use my native language whenever I get an
opportunity to do so. I see it as an accessibility feature. Much easier to
understand things when they're in your native language.

~~~
Kaiyou
How is it accessible when you're limiting your audience to people speaking
your native language? Also, English is easier to understand than my native
language, which lends itself to getting unnecessary convoluted. Especially
when studying, I always look first at English resources, since the one in my
native language are made more difficult to understand because of the
complexity of the language itself. (My first language is German.)

~~~
rvp-x
If I have an audience that entirely speaks the language I try to take
advantage of it. It's very common here for people to use English
unconditionally in conversations about technology.

------
Causality1
The rules of linguistic evolution apply just as much online as they do face to
face. The complexity and uniqueness of a language is inversely proportional to
how much contact its speakers have with non-speakers, especially ones learning
the language as adults. Some contact starts to grind the sharp edges off, like
losing clicks. More contact begins morphing the grammar, such as changing
order from subject-object-verb to subject-verb-object. Eventually they blend
together, or if their populations are too uneven, one is absorbed.

Ultimately you have to make a choice. Do you wall yourself off to keep foreign
language from overly influencing you or do you give up a part of yourself to
join the conversation?

Anecdotally, the working class people I've talked to care a lot more about the
opportunities they get from learning English than they do about preserving the
legacy of their language.

