[Sigia-l] language list

[Johndan Johnson-Eilola]

I raise this as a broader issue than one directly aimed at Peter's 
request, since it's not an easily resolvable problem, but I wanted to 
point out that we have a large Mohawk reservation nearby (and there are 
others). I don't have specific figures about their connectivity rates, 
but I know many people there who are online (I would guess there are 
thousands).

That said (and lest I be accused of pointless political correctness), I 
believe that the majority of Internet users on the local reservation 
speak either English or French as either a primary or secondary language 
(or perhaps tertiary) (French because the reservation spans both Upstate 
NY and Quebec, across the St. Lawrence Seaway). I'm assuming many users 
who speak one of the minority languages also know (at secondary or 
tertiary levels) more commonly spoken languages such as French, English, 
Spanish, etc. It'd be interesting to know (a) if there's such a 
shortened list available, and (b) what it's based on--it seems like a 
linguist somewhere must have looked at the intersection of 
primary/secondary languages and Internet usage to see where useful 
subsets could be formed.

Everything's a trade-off, and I haven't seen elegant solutions to this 
problem yet. (Which, I suppose, is why IA is so complicated.)

- Johndan

Peter Van Dijck wrote:

> Does anyone know of an rfc or something that has a list of "common" 
> languages that doesn't result in a superlong dropdown? I'd rather have 
> 60 languages than 400.  [rest of post trimmed]