Article,
Free Software for Indigenous Languages
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Saint Louis University Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, (2008)
Abstract
The dynamics of the ongoing shift to English are probably familiar to all speakers of indigenous languages: English is viewed as the language of commerce, technology, higher education, and social mobility. It is the language of the Anglo-American television programs, movies, and music that young people find most attractive. Irish, on the other hand, is associated with Ireland’s rural, impoverished past, with “old-fashioned” culture, and is generally viewed as “useless” in the global economy of the 21st century. This work to help reverse this language shift has focused on the domains of software and computing. Up until about seven years ago, there was virtually no software available in Irish, and this meant that when children were introduced to computers in school, it was necessarily in an English-only context. Similarly, in the business world, the lack of Irish software made it extremely difficult to maintain Irish as the language of the workplace
