Talk:Activities/Proposals/Support UK indigenous minority languages

I think we'd be better off widening the focus to all UK minority languages, as opposed to just indigenous ones. We were set-up to cover the current people of our geographic region, so since many non-indigenous languages have a considerably larger base than the indigenous ones, even given historical-cultural-preservation arguments in favour of particularly concentrating on indigenous languages it may perhaps be a little offensive for us to do so. --Cfp 02:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

In practice a single initiative would focus just on one language at a time - say Welsh. Indigenous languages - Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Cornish and Manx - have funding support from the devolved administrations we could tap into. These days the government is actually discouraging immigrant language support - preferring english language teaching as a route to inclusion. A project supporting, for instance, French Wikipedia, would be better led by the French chapter, notwithstanding the 300,000 native French speakers in the UK. AndrewRT 10:26, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

It is a well established fact that learning to read and write is most effectively learned in the mother tongue. The UNESCO indicated in a recent report that the lack of support for minority languages is the principal reason why minorities are not doing that well.

I would argue that when people in the UK are heavily into the French Wikipedia, they will find support in the French Wikipedia community but for logistical and other support it would make better sense for the UK chapter to do what it is there for. GerardM 20:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)