Re: for next release notes

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 18:59 +0330, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 15:48, Luis Villa wrote:
> > http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html
> > 
> > I don't know if you guys/gals have found this, but I remember last time
> > we worked up release notes, we were looking for this kind of
> > information, so I thought I'd email it to the list so that we can find
> > it in the archives next time we need it :)
> 
> Problems:
> 
> (1) Ethnologue is about native *speak*ers. It's not about how many
> people *read* the language. For example, when you add Persian support to
> GNOME, you will have the whole literate population of Iran by your side,
> since Persian is the only official language and literacy means reading
> it. But when you just count native speakers of "Persian", they're only
> half of the country.
> 
> (2) Ethnologue is not a reliable source for differentiating languages
> the way ISO codes do that. For example, the language I translate for,
> Persian, with the ISO code of "fa", is "FARSI, WESTERN"+"FARSI,
> EASTERN"+lots of more entries not listed on the Top 107 thing.
> 
> (3) Ethnologue is not a reliable source for the number of speakers of
> languages, specially when we want to find about minority languages or
> more obscure areas. I found that very important when I was doing some
> language research in Afghanistan.
> 
> (4) The list is from 1996.
> 
> There are probably more reasons, but I guess those are enough to dismiss
> it.

Ah, well, then. Strike that suggestion :)

Luis