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South Asia

Table of Major South Asian languages and their Wikipedias

Wiki code	Language	Primary Country	Number of speakers (Millions)	Potential Users (Millions)	Number of articles (7-09)	# of articles >1500 bytes (7-09)	Articles, 1 year growth rate (5/08-5/09)	# of 5+editors (5-09)	5+ editors, 1 year growth rate (5/08-5/09)	5+ editors,2 year growth rate (5/07-5/09)	Article to editor ratio
hi	Hindi	India	*302	18.1	34,614	3,461	65%	72	60%	112%	481
bn	Bengali	Bangladesh	*251	15.1	20,049	2,406	14%	53	33%	104%	378
ur	Urdu	Pakistan	*101	6	10,667	1,707	36%	39	22%	50%	274
pa	Punjabi	Pakistan	91	5.5	1,408	113	380%	18	157%	260%	78
te	Telugu	India	70	4.2	43,556	3,049	8%	45	-21%	32%	968
mr	Marathi	India	68	4.1	23,651	1,419	32%	47	38%	74%	503
ta	Tamil	India	66	3.9	18,951	4,359	31%	61	22%	65%	311
gu	Gujarati	India	47	2.8	7,454	373	490%	25	39%	178%	298
ml	Malayalam	India	36	2.2	10,631	3,508	60%	83	17%	84%	128
kn	Kannada	India	35	2.1	6,812	1,022	19%	32	28%	100%	213
or	Oriya	India	32	1.9	538	5	79%	7	40%	N/A	77
ps	Pushto	Pakistan	20	1.2	1,363	654	19%	20	33%	82%	68
si	Sinhala	Sri Lanka	*18	1.1	1,847	55	161%	16	33%	167%	115
as	Assamese	India	17	1	249	960	15%	5	-17%	-38%	50
ne	Nepali	Nepal	14	0.8	2,746	247	4%	14	-7%	-22%	196

*Includes second language speakers

Table showing comparison of article depth and quality of top Indian language Wikipedias (as of 2009 August)

Language	Official article count	Articles over 0.5 Kb (percentage)	Articles over 2 Kb (percentage)	Average Bytes per article	Edits per article	Database Size (MB)	Words (M)	Images	Page depth
Bengali	20,022	54	12	1244	15.8	74	3.7	1197	64
Hindi	33,497	34	10	1162	7.9	128	7.9	3386	21
Kannada	6,685	55	15	1381	12.4	28	1.2	1413	16
Malayalam	10,271	83	33	2590	24.9	80	3.0	6112	173
Marathi	23,448	24	6	716	12.8	56	2.4	1872	16
Tamil	18,625	81	23	1840	15.8	100	4.1	3533	26
Telugu	43,370	21	7	714	7.7	82	3.9	4947	5

growth of articles greater 1.5 kb

South Asian languages

• There are over 900 million native language speakers of the 15 South Asian languages listed in the table, comprising 57% of the population of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan.
• All of the 15 languages listed in the table are official languages of one or more South Asian country, or state, and are used extensively in the local print media.
• While many of these languages have a long written history, there are limited digital resources in these languages on science, technology, and world history
• While there are many other languages spoken in South Asia, these fifteen languages were chosen due to large number of speakers, importance as official languages, and as medium of educational instruction.

South Asia and Internet access and usage

• Despite the large number of speakers of these languages, most lack access to computers and the Internet, with Internet use rates of 6% of the population for the region as a whole. Additionally, most people in South Asia with Internet access can also read English.
• Although English is still the dominant language on the web for India, there are active and growing online communities in Indian languages. For example www.maayboli.com, a Marathi language Internet community boasts of 100,000 hits monthly. Many of these online communities use a Drupal based platform which facilitates typing in Indian language fonts

South Asian languages and education

• All of the languages listed are used as mediums of instruction at the elementary and high school level in different states and countries of South Asia.
• Many private high schools, some elite public high schools, and some advanced high school science classes are taught in English.
  • For example, in the Indian state of Maharashtra in 2009 there were approximately 1,500,000 students graduating from the 10th grade in the state high school system. Of these, 750,000 pursued a course of studies in the humanities which is taught in the official state language of Marathi, 300,000 in the sciences which is taught in English, and 450,000 ended their studies at the 10th grade
• English is the primary language for higher education in South Asia. However, some universities in India use local languages at the undergraduate level.

South Asian language Wikipedias

• There are some South Asian language Wikipedias in all of the 15 listed languages in the table. Some have shown a moderate growth over time, while others have grown at a very slow pace.
  • There are three Wikipedias in South Asian languages of more than 3 million speakers that were not listed, Kashmiri, Sindhi and Bhojpuri, but none of these three have more than 2500 articles.

Barriers to growth of the South Asian language Wikipedias

• There are several major barriers to the growth of South Asian Wikipedias:
  • Low awareness of tools for typing Indian scripts on Western-style keyboards and outdated computers and operating systems that do not allow people to read and type in South Asian language scripts
  • Lack of Wikipedia tools to facilitate editing in Indian languages and a lack of editors who have the technical skills to address problems and fix bugs
  • Low awareness of the existence of Indian language Wikipedias
  • Strong emphasis on English for advanced education and professional advancement

Updating of Potential user calculation

• Google Spreadsheet