Swahili Wiki-Dictionary?

Martin Benjamin writes "The Hartford Courant just published a feature article on the Kamusi Project Internet Living Swahili Dictionary. This project is using the Net to put together dictionaries that are as scholarly as any university publication, yet with a secure participatory model that draws on knowledge from users around the world. Now the project is developing learning tools that will build on the Kamusi model of collaborative scholarship."

Comments

Re:Racist

[rubycodez]

nope, you just have a chip on your shoulder. From the article: "With more than 80 million speakers in East and Central Africa, Swahili is the most widely spoken language in Africa, though a fully updated dictionary of the language has not been produced for 30 years."

Re:Racist

[TubeSteak]

Ditto, he's playing the race card.

"I brought a bunch of English magazines to read myself to sleep at night, and this teenage kid, Ernest Kidenya, whom I've known since he was knee high, was looking through them wanting to learn some of the words," Benjamin said. "Then I realized, `How are kids in Africa going to ever learn a language if there is one dictionary for every 400 students?'"

1 dictionary for every 400 students...
I seriously doubt that the computer:student ratio is better than that.

Re:Is he re-creating the language?

[Malangali]

The dictionary does not re-create the language, it documents it. It is a "living" dictionary, meaning that it is designed to remain extremely current to the language as it is used, through the submissions of users who have their ears to the ground. However, only words that can be documented, through printed sources, radio broadcasts, contemporary Swahili music, etc, are accepted for inclusion in the dictionary. It is intended as a reference resource, not the word of God. As to whether anyone will know the difference about the accuracy of the entries, that surely depends on your definition of "anyone." The population of the Swahili-speaking world is roughly the same as that of the German-speaking world. Would you make such a comment about a project for German?