OLPC Ethiopia

The following is copied from EMGP THE ETHIOPIAN MILLENNIUM GIFT PROJECT page, which is an affilated project of this page.

Which languages or languages are to be used?

Which language or languages are to be used? There are about 81 Languages presently spoken in Ethiopia. (Obviously we are not going to target all of them.) The process of choosing the language should be decided through the process. Though there are many factors that are going to decide which languages are going to be "available" for the Ethiopian millennium, the number of volunteers that commit their resources would be the deciding factor.Obviously there should be a possibility for every one to work on his/her choice of language. If we take the number of speakers of the language as an indicator then the fallowing would be the top 10.

  1. Amharic
  2. Afan Oromo
  3. Welayta (and related languages)
  4. Tigraway
  5. Somali
  6. Gurage
  7. Sidama
  8. Afar
  9. Hadiyya (and Related languages)
 10. Kafa (and related languages) 

But that is the most optimistic scenario. The realistic figure for the millennium would be a completed Amharic product and a partialy completed Afan Oromo, Wolayta and Tigraway.

Do they all use the Ethiopic script? Except Afan Oromo that uses officially Latin script since 1991 all others use the Ethiopic script. But my guss is there will be people who would like to contribute to an Afan Oromo ethiopic version too. If the tools are provided the volunteers would show which direction the projects would go.--Teferra 13:41, 27 May 2006 (EDT)