Timezone: +00:00
Tshibilu:Wiki ku mukana mwetu
Wiki na monɔkɔ lya bísó
Start and end time
05:23, 1 November 2023 to 22:59, 29 February 2024
Location
In-person event
DR Congo, Congo, Angola
Online event
The link will be made available by the organizers.
#WikiForMotherTongue 2024 : Wiki na monɔkɔ mua bísó
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Wiki na monɔkɔ mua bísó (Wiki in our local language) initiated by WikiLinguila is an editorial campaign aimed at highlighting Wikimedia projects in local African languages from the central region or promoted as national languages in their respective communities or countries existing in the form of language versions of Wikipedia and its sister projects, by also involving other African communities that are moving in this direction. Our aim is to create, from February 2025, a continental event between African communities evolving in the Wikimedia movement, and to enhance the feeling of belonging by focusing on strengthening links and collaboration with other people speaking the same languages. This publishing competition coincides with the celebration of International Mother Language Day on February 21 each year, and also with the movement's strategies for the period to 2030 :
- Increasing the sustainability of our Movement;
- Provide for safety and inclusion;
- Ensuring equity in decision-making;
- Coordinate Across Stakeholders;
- Manage Internal Knowledge.
Reasons
The initiative started when we noticed that we're feeding large wikis almost every day basis in terms of in terms of number of articles and contributors assigned, which have more than one million articles and over 10,000 active contributors, while the small wikis, including ours too, are getting emptier and are becoming more empty. Moreover, we think it's these wikis that can be shaped in our own way, rather the ideal space in which to construct our own editing rules, because, whether it's the wikipedia language version in French, in Sängö, in Fɔngbemɛ, in Kikôngo, in Lingála, in Swahili or even in Kinyarwanda, it is considered from a general point of view to be on a par with that written in English. Along the way, we also encounter a number of obstacles, such as language barriers, because most educational projects are in English.
We also encourage participants to work with professionals from African language training centers for small-scale training courses. We know that our varied languages lack written documentation and that the majority of documents published in local languages are subject to copyright, so it is necessary to partner with other educational structures in this area with a view to prepare important quality documentation to train and always upgrade editors in writing articles via our respective languages on Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to maintain a high level of competence and ensure the relevance of content online or public on our various Wikimedia projects.
Objectives
The Wikimedia Foundation only hosts our online projects, and if we do nothing, nothing will happen either. That said, we won't stop contributing to other wikis, such as French or English, but also looking aside to try to highlight promoting, giving visibility to and highlighting our languages. Otherwise, a language that doesn't evolve gradually dies out, until it's a dead language.
We give little importance to our own works, which can nevertheless be built by and for ourselves. Wiki na monɔkɔ mua bísó aims to bridge this gap, to reduce this contribution gap, in order to highlight our intrinsic identity and revive both our languages by highlighting Wikimedia activities in Congo-Kinshasa and throughout Central Africa, as we wish and want to make the month of February within the Wikimedia movement, The month of mother-tongue contributions, and every February 21, during the International Mother Tongue Day (promulgated by UNESCO in 2000), we celebrate our different languages through the event Wiki na monɔkɔ mua bísó, a good way of preserving the cultural heritage of minority peoples through Wikimedia projects and other structures working to make their culture accessible on the Internet.
Make lobby to the competent local authorities with a view to set up an academy to help and advance our African languages progress and evolve. In the same perspective, we're fighting for the adoption of our respective national languages as language courses in African schools and universities, As in the case of the DRC, French can meanwhile remain the official language of education, but other secondary languages can be taught as branches of language courses, like English, French or Portuguese, throughout the school and university curriculum.
Brief overview
- Bridge this gap, reduce this gap in contributions between large and small wikis
- Increasing contributions in our Wikipedias corresponding to our languages to promote and give visibility to these languages and also involve members of our community
The main project is ln.wikipedia.org, but also ln.wiktionary.org and Lingua Libre. By the end of 2024 and early 2025, we expect to reach 5000 articles in ln.wikipedia.org and many achievements in several other related projects.
Wiki na monɔkɔ mua bísó in its language policy needs every speaker of this language to take ownership of the project and make it their own!
