Talk:Americalang/en

Unclear participant categories

Hi. The two categories of participants in the project proposed are not clearly defined. The first list is headed "Participants who are native speakers of indigenous or minority languages". Note that the description under the heading only says "If you are a speaker of an indigenous or minority language which is not Spanish, English, French, Portuguese or Dutch...". This says "speaker" which is NOT the same thing as native speaker, as there are also new speakers of indigenous/minority languages; in fact, there should be some if the language is one undergoing recovery! Secondly, "an indigenous or minority language which is not Spanish, English, French, Portuguese or Dutch" is a very strange way to word it because we all know that Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch are not indigenous or minority languages! Then the other category is headed "Participants who are native speakers of non-indigenous languages". That would seem to include new speakers of indigenous languages - right? But the description that follows says "If you are interested in this program but do not speak an indigenous or minority language of the Americas...". Please note that this wording excludes new speakers, who do speak such a language (though they are not a native speaker). Personally I would not fit into either of these categories, so could not participate, I guess, because I am a new speaker of an indigenous language, so I am not in the first category (because not a native speaker) and not in the second category (because I speak such a language). I appreciate this has probably been drawn up hastily and is just a problem of wording, but I take the whole subject covered here very seriously and encourage us all to be careful to clarify our ideas and how we express them. Or is there a subtext here which assumes that non-native speakers of indigenous languages cannot speak them?? Anyway, thanks for inviting me here, I'm just trying to help you get off to a good start. --A R King (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2016 (UTC) PS When the categories of participants in the chapter are clarified and I fit in one of the lists, I will of course add myself! --A R King (talk) 18:48, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Separate Project

Sorry, don't mean to be overly precise, as I think that any initiative to help support with indigenous communities is worthwhile and should be applauded, but this project "Americalang" is separate and independent to the proposed project "https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Strengthening_Indigenous-Language_Wikipedias_in_Latin_America Strengthening Indigenous Language Wikipedias in Latin America] as submitted to the Wikimedia Grants program. That is the reason I removed it from the "What Are We Doing?" section.

--Barrioflores (talk) 21:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

That is a useful clarification which it really would have been helpful to know sooner, so thank you for pointing it out. This was starting to get confusing, and since I only just began to be interested in the present project (the original one), there could have been negative consequences. I would strongly urge whoever is responsible to be clearer about what is going on for the sake of interested people in the future who are not in the know. I have already spoken elsewhere about the destructive effects of confusing behaviour on Wikipedia... Cheers, saludos --A R King (talk) 12:10, 21 August 2016 (UTC)