NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

a decade running around the world talking to cell
phone manufacturers — everyone I could think of —
saying, ‘Look, we can support 100 languages, it’s
a big market.’ They didn’t care. People say, ‘Why
don’t you go talk to Nokia?’ I have talked to Noki
a. Again and again and again.”
Lamine Dabo and Nouhan Sano, Guineans who live in
Bangkok, where there is a prosperous and close-kni
t Guinean community, have had a similar experience
. They have been trying to persuade manufacturers
to develop an N’Ko cellphone since 2007. Dabo and
Sano’s gem-importing businesses take them all over
Asia, and all over Asia they bring their list of
more than 17,000 N’Ko words. Dabo says it’s possib
le to build a cheap cellphone with N’Ko as its lan
guage, a camera and slots for two SIM cards — a ne
cessity in Africa, where reception is often spotty
. When he went to Guinea and Mali to discuss the p
hone with distributors, he said, he was mobbed wit
h interest. But his briefcase was filled with reje
ctions from manufacturers. Some asked him to put u
p the money himself. “Everyone says it’s possible,
but the money is not enough for them to make it a
priority,” he said.
Dabo and Sano are still trying. It might seem stra
nge that the fortunes of N’Ko and of indigenous la
nguages around the world should depend on the abil
ity to subtitle “24,” to write with Windows and, a
bove all, to text. But for hundreds of heritage la
nguages, a four-inch bar of plastic and battery an
d motherboard is the future of the past.
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