catalan and welsh among forty languages to be added to microsoft windows
forty new languages will be introduced into microsoft windows as part of a project to increase usage by minority language speakers and in response to complaints from around the world that young people in particular were losing their native tongues.microsoft programmes already run in forty languages including english, spanish, arabic and chinese variants. for instance a welsh start menu and some commands will be available in about six months. the other big linguistic groups to benefit from the expansion will be speakers of gujarati and tamil in india, of catalan in the iberian peninsula and of bahasa in malaysia.
bbc news online reported that native languages from northern canada and ethiopia will also be added. start menus and instructions like 'save' and 'search' will be introduced, said microsoft. the company's worldwide public sector senior vice president maggie wilderotter said they were working with governments and academics to develop the languages over the next year, for microsoft windows xp and microsoft office 2003.
via ananova
