Re: Kurdish - we give it a start

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Baris Cicek wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 12:37 +0200, Erdal Ronahi wrote:
>  
>
> > Hi Clytie, hi everybody,
> >
> > thanks for the warm words. To translate software into Kurdish is a great 
> > challenge indeed. Although close to 40 Million people speak Kurdish, it 
> > could not develop well, because it has been forbidden in Turkey, where 
> > most Kurds live. Still it is not been taught at any state school - let 
> > alone university. So we have to create a wholly "new" computer 
> > terminology, which makes this task very difficult.
> >    
>
> I'm not aiming to start a political discussion in here, but just want to
> fix a misinformation. This is to say 'Kurdish' is not forbidden in
> Turkey. It's just Turkey only let broadcasting and education in Turkish,
> in past. That's not special to 'Kurdish' or any other language. After
> language revolution of Turkey in 1938 people forced to use only Turkish
> with new form. Of course that was obsolate in new century where everyone
> is talking/using modern Turkish. During EU process Turkish Gov. let any
> minority to use its language in education and broadcasting with
> government permission. And that's the case in any other EU country
> (maybe even with broader rights). Though using Kurdish computer
> programmes were never forbidden in Turkey. Thus blaming Turkey for poor
> Kurdish support is kind of vague.
>  
According to the Human Rights Watch 
(http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/turkey/turkey993-08.htm),
it appears that minority languages have been prohibited in Turkey. It 
appears that the Kurdish language
has not been prohibited specifically (all minority languages suffered, 
including Greek), but rather
the effect was worse on the Kurdish language as the population speaking 
it was much larger
and there was no other country to develop it.
I am not sure if the consistution and the practices have changed since 
1999 (link?), though
the long legacy might be hard to change.
It appears that in neighbouring countries with Kurdish populations there 
have been similar situations.

Therefore, the point that Erdal makes could be rephrased from
"because it has been forbidden in Turkey"
to
"because it has been effectively prohibitited in Turkey until [date]"


> > The other difficulties are, as you said, economical underdevelopment and 
> > little computer access. I am happy that the international free software 
> > community - and especially the GNOME supports all kinds of localization 
> > efforts. Because other players in the software market don't.
> >    
>
> I personally support every attemt to localize software for local
> market/usage. Kurdish is no exception. You can get support from our
> mailing list gnome-turk gnome org  And for sending Kurdish translations
> untill your cvs account will be ready, you can send your files to me and
> I can commit them to CVS. 
>  
I think this help would be great for the new language support.

Simos