New home for WebAL

After long and tough negotiations in a dimly lit room at the back of bar, with cigar smoke lingering in the air, lots of arm waving, shouting, and a few cold drinks, WebAL (Web resources for African languages) has finally found a new home at:

www.africanlanguages.org

It is now in the competent hands of Guy de Pauw, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver and David Joffe. The new WebAL will be done in wiki style, something that I should have done myself ages ago, but it takes good men to do something good. The new format will be a tremendous boost for WebAL’s continued existence.

While working on WebAL over the past 5 years, I got a lot of help and encouraging emails, even though I would have appreciated a free weekend at some fancy Cape Town lodge more; all expenses paid, of course. Nah, just kidding! All your contributions, suggestions and emails have been quite rewarding and satisfying.

Now go over there and download some grammar books to read.

Web resources for African languages

For a few years now, I have been maintaining a set of web pages collecting links to web accessible materials on African languages, the WebAL. Since I keep track of stuff like that for my own benefit, it has been little additional trouble transforming data that to a web format useful also to others.

However, I feel I’ve done what I can with it, and as much as it pains me, I can’t quite devote the time it deserves anymore. The web accessible material on African languages keeps growing almost by the day, and it would be benefitial to many people if something like the WebAL pages could continue to exist.

Thus I’m now looking for someone who might be willing to take over the maintenance of WebAL — and do whatever they want with it. I’m sure my archaic HTML tagging needs updating, if nothing else.

Drop me a mail if you’re interested, or know of someone who might be. (And just to clarify, I’m interested only in serious proposals. For instance, a move to a university site, or similar, would be preferable.)