Hello Frederik Ramm, Thanks for your mail. Regarding your first question:
In every day's real life, we don't speak in English. Even in internet, most
of people write in Bengali or sometime Banglish (Banglish is Bengali
written in latin alphabet. e.g "Aponi kemon achen?" insted of "আপনি কেমন
আছেন?" This is because sometime people don't have bengali keyboard or don't
know how to activate even though their device have bengali keyboard in the
language settings.). Sometime you may find some (higher educated) people
write in English but most of people write in Bengali.
As you said in comparison section, same thing here in Bangladesh, like
every other country most kids learn English at school but more than a
significant portion of people would not be able to communicate in English
unless they had higher education. Not only that, many people wouldn't
undersatnd or cann't read english at all. For example, my grandmother can't
read or understand English, My mother who is not 50 years old can read some
english but not every word and dont understand. Even for me, i don't speak
english. You may say how can i able to write english here, this is because
i am getting help from Google translate. it's taking me two hours to write
this short email.
It really hurts when someone say i should write my changeset in English,
it hurts because i don't speak or fluent in writing in this language. It's
really discomprting in order to contribute.
What is more discomprting and hurts is that when it was told/suggesed to
me/proposed (see archive of this mail) to write primary name ("name" tag)
in English because some foreign people can't read Bengali or some aid
organization cann't read Bengali (anyway aid organization usally get help
from govment or recrute local people in order to oparate. also every data
have a english name in the id, they can esaly read that) while we are
forgation million of Bangladeshi people. (this problem, some foreign people
can't read Bengali, will never fixed, no one can't fix it, even if wait
1000 years).
Although every modern device support Bengali, but yes, some Apps doesn't
render Bengali correctly. This little technical problem is fixable. Our
approach should be contact right people in order to fix this. Not the other
way around (use English as primary).
Unlike our neighbour country India, we don't have 22 official language.
Bengali is the official and *de facto* national language
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_language> of Bangladesh. It is the
official and most widely spoken written language of Bangladesh. Every
street names or city names contain/written in Bengali and sometime also
english (but not without Bengali). Primary name ("name = ... " tag) for
Bangladesh in OSM should be in Bengali. Any other language should be added
via their language code.
I have no comment regarding second and third question.
Thank you.
শুক্র, ২২ নভেম্বর, ২০১৯ তারিখে ১১:০৫ PM টায় এ Frederik Ramm <
[email protected]> লিখেছেন:
> Hello everyone,
>
> the Data Working Group has been made aware of this discussion. I am from
> Germany and I have very little knowledge about Bangladesh, so I would
> initially like to ask three basic questions that will help me understand
> the situation:
>
> 1. What is the status of English in everyday life in Bangladesh? Can
> everyone who uses the Internet also communicate in written English, or
> would a requirement of "please write your changeset comment in English"
> exclude certain parts of the population? Also, what about signage - will
> signs with street names or city names contain Bangla, English, or both
> names?
>
> For comparison, here in Germany, while nowadays most kids learn English
> at school, a significant portion of people who are 50 years or older
> would not be able to communicate in English unless they had higher
> education.
>
> 2. What is the relationship between the "OpenStreetMap Bangladesh
> Foundation" and the mapper community in Bangladesh? How many mappers are
> members in the OSMBDF? How can mappers join the organisation, and how do
> they democratically influence what the OSMBDF does? I checked the web
> site but I found no information about that.
>
> 3. A general question about mailing list etiquette. Is it usual, in
> mailing list discussions in Bangladesh, to refer to other participants
> with their last name? If you were to reply to my post with "Dear Mr
> Ramm", would that be (a) normal, (b) an expression of respect, or (c) an
> expression of "you are not part of my group so I will not use your first
> name"?
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
> _______________________________________________
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> [email protected]
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-bd
>
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