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-----Original Message-----
From: bantu-l-admin@xxxxxx On Behalf Of Donald Z. Osborn
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 8:25 PM
To: A12n-forum@xxxxxx; bantu-l@xxxxxx
Subject: [Bantu-L] Fwd: World Language Mapping in GIS format
This item is not specifically about African languages and ICT but it raises two interesting issues:
1) The use of GIS (geographic information systems) in various ways for research, planning, and development. GIS is becoming more user-friendly and there is significant work being done in using the techology in participatory ways. It won't be long before we'll be talking about localization issues for not only GIS content in Africa (there was a little of this in Senegal already), but also the software.
2) This project calls to mind the many mentions over the years of making a
linguistic atlas for Africa - at least back to Niamey in 1978. See for
instance
Niamey 1978 - http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/Niamey78en.htm
Bamako 1979 - http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/Bamako79fr-Rapport.htm
Harare 1997 - http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/Harare97plan.htm
I am not sure where efforts on the African language atlas project have gone (in terms of completion or availability), though I do know that there have been at least partial mappings of language & dialect usage, such as in Cameroon. Also, I imagine that more focused maps than the world one - continental, regional, country, and province/region - could be more detailed. In any event, perhaps GIS will provide a dynamic structure not only for documenting and understanding language use, but also for planning and policy in language matters and related issues (education, ICT4D).
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
(from the Linguist list)
Date: 24-Sep-2004
From: Bill Dickson <bill@xxxxxx>
Subject: World Language Mapping in GIS format
The World Lanuguage Mapping System (WLMS), a set of worldwide language homeland areas (polygons) and point locations for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)is now generally available for the first time. Dataset developed jointly by SIL and GMI maps all languages of the 14th Edition Ethnologue, and includes substantially all of the data of the published Ethnologue as a GIS attribute table. For information see http://www.gmi.org/wlms
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