Language support summary/discussion

[Martin Pitt]

Hi!

Thibaut Varene [2005-02-16 15:43 +0100]:
> A quick reaction on these figures: They are completely biased. 

I don't think that they are biased, there are just a gazillion
different ways to interpret "speaker"

> You are only accounting native speakers here, as noted. 

Indeed, and I did that deliberately. Ubuntu's long-term goal is that
everybody can use a computer in his native language. :-)

> "The following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of
> countries where each is spoken.  The number that follows is the total
> number of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):
> 
>    1. English (115)
>    2. French (35)
>    3. Arabic (24)
>    4. Spanish (20)
>    5. Russian (16)
>    6. German (9)
>    7. Mandarin (5)
>    8. Portuguese (5)
>    9. Hindi/Urdu (2)
>   10. Bengali (1)
>   11. Japanese (1)"
> 
> These figures are IMHO much more relevant to the question "how broad
> our language support will be if we include that language package".

To avoid misunderstandings, I in no way insist on taking the very
first list, I can as well take this one. We just have to find a
consensus which has an objective justification to avoid flamewars
about "you don't like my country". So we must base this decision on a
well-known, public, and objective statistics to avoid getting in
trouble with geopolitics.

> PS: I hope you understand why ripping off French would be a bad idea, btw? ;o)

Sure :-) FWIW, I don't really appreciate throwing out German, too, but
I can't help it (well, I should produce some - a lot of - children,
maybe :-) ).

Martin,
who goes to increase the number of German speakers now :-)

-- 
Martin Pitt                       http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer            http://www.ubuntulinux.org
Debian GNU/Linux Developer       http://www.debian.org
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