Edited by author 03-02-2007 03:30 PM
I made a small change to the group name due to a problem the RSS software had with the "&" in the old name. So Ghanaian languages & ICT is now Ghanaian languages and ICT. Don

Edited by author 04-19-2007 10:51 AM
There is a nice article in the Accra weekly, Public Agenda, on women and ICT that discusses advantages of localizing in Ghanaian languages. See:

"ICT Can Transform the Lives of African Women," by Isabella Gyau Orhin, Public Agenda, April 4, 2007
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704090934.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/message/809

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org

There is an Akan word processor / "light-weight text editor" called Nkraata V1.1, which is available for free download at http://www.nkraata.com/

Edited by author 11-23-2007 01:05 PM
Don't always believe what you read in the newspapers. The News Post of Frederick, Maryland, USA had an article* last August about the number of languages represented in among students in local schools. It included this statement:

"One student speaks Twi, an African language with no formal written alphabet."

Such misinformation can undermine efforts to promote localization and various uses of the language in ICT. Also, how did this kind of misinformation get out there - did the source simply not know that Twi has been written for some time? Are there people in Ghana and Ghanaian expatriates who have never been exposed to writing in major Ghanaian languages?

I do realize that there is an issue about a unified Akan orthography, but that's not the same as saying Twi has "no formal written alphabet."

Don


* "Learning the language" (Originally published August 27, 2007), By Nancy Hernandez http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/...l.htm?StoryID=72173

Edited by author 11-23-2007 02:01 PM
During the last four weeks there has been a discussion about keyboard layouts on the a12n-collaboration list. The main topic is plans by the One Laptop Per Child project for a multilingual keyboard for its "XO" laptop. The keyboard layout would be intended to support languages of Nigeria or the whole of West Africa. In fact it seems to be OLPC's hope to have a single QWERTY (English) layout for the region (which could later be adapted to the French AZERTY keyboard).

If you are interested, see http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/pu...a12n-collaboration/ (Note- this list is not an official OLPC forum)

The OLPC layouts are shown at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:WAfrica-Alt-1.png
&
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nigeria_Keyboard

The main website of OLPC is http://laptop.org/

Don

I received a request for Unicode text of African languages written in Latin script with extended characters. The purpose is testing some new fonts. Does anyone have access to such digital texts of Ghanaian languages?

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net