[Indic-computing-devel] Sui and Damaru!!!

[Rajkumar S <s_...@my...>]

Hi all,

This is an interesting extract from
http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm, where the
author talks about an experiment involving introducing interent to slum
childern.

Definitly worth reading.

raj

Q: But most of the information on the Internet is in English and the
people you're talking about don't speak English.

A: We had some very surprising results there. We all have great
misconceptions about what these children know and don't know. At first, I
made a Hindi interface for the kids, which gave them links for hooking up
with Web sites in their own language. I thought it would be a great hit.
Guess what they did with it? They shut it down and went back to Internet
Explorer. I realized that they may not understand the dictionary meaning
of [English] words, but they have an operational understanding. They know
what that word does. They don't know how to pronounce F-I-L-E, but they
know that within it are options of saving and opening up files ...

The fact that the Internet is in English will not stop them from accessing
it.

They invent their own terminology for what's going on. For example, they
call the pointer of the mouse sui, which is Hindi for needle. More
interesting is the hourglass that appears when something is happening.
Most Indians have never heard of an hourglass. I asked them, "What does
that mean?" They said, "It's a damru," which is Hindi for Shiva's drum.
[The God] Shiva holds an hourglass - shaped drum in his hand that you can
shake from side to side. So they said the sui became a damru when the
"thing" [the computer] was doing something.