I'm a bit bemused (if that's the right word) by this thread, mainly the
fact that most ardent advocates of some version of "English as the
official list language" seem to be in the main not native speakers of
English, and the native speakers seem to be in the main sitting on the
sideline.
Roberto Gorjão wrote:
[... skipping some of the more heated portions ...]
This hypothesis also reflects the idea that not only the "English is the
language most users are likely to be able to read" but that things
should be kept that way. While recognizing that each community should
decide freely which language should be pointed as preferably spoken, I
strongly disagree with the idea of English as an international language.
English requires many years of continuous practise to master
Quite true, and in fact the Brits are still working on getting it right. :-)
and using
it as international support of communication on all situations creates
an unfair disadvantage to those that do not speak natively that language
and in fact a sense of awkwardness that constraints many not to express
their views. In my opinion, international auxiliary languages should be
used in these situations -- specially Interlingua, as naturalistic
international languages have proofed themselves more easy to learn than
schematic ones like Esperanto.
In my misspent youth, I actually learned a bit of Esperanto -- only to
lose it since nobody else within 100 miles (ca. 160 km) knew a word of
it. My point here being that if we try to use something like
Interlingua for a list such as ours, we will achieve the egalitarian
outcome of driving everyone off it.
I know, off course, this is a polemic
issue, to say the least, but I remind you that if English is still
probably the language in which the majority of most important contents
are expressed in the Internet -- and I'm not even sure about that --
Until a few years ago, I taught a course on business use of the
Internet, and as of that date I believe statistics bore this out. The
number of web pages written in "native languages" (if that is the right
way to phrase it) has increased recently, and at some point we may find
that the highest incidence of web pages (I won't say "important" since
importance is in the eye of the beholder) will be in some other language
-- most likely Mandarin or something close. For now, though, English is
the unofficial "official" language of the 'Net, probably as an artifact
of the origins of the Internet.
other languages contents are growing exponentially and it is a shame
that we do not take the opportunity to set an easy learning language as
a preferable "lingua franca" on the Internet. That will be surely
penalizing for us all in a short time.
This is an interesting topic, although perhaps not directly germane to
the immediate problem of this list's language(s). Historically,
Internet access was restricted to a demographic slice with above average
education, which outside the US implies a higher likelihood of being
polylingual (and, in particular, having some fluency in English). As
Internet use spreads to a wider swath of the overall population, I agree
that it will be progressively more difficult to sustain English as a
common tongue for the 'Net. But we're wandering a bit wide afield here.
(Sorry, but I'm an academic, so I can never pass up the opportunity to
go off on a tangent.)
Anyway, I would like to propose a third way to this list, a different
hypothesis that we could call "ENGLISH TRANSLATION APPRECIATED".
Calling for some further explanation at the list policies document, for
example, where it could be made clearer that the translation would be
considered a way of contributing for the common knowledge but not
necessarily required in all times, this third way, IMO, would not
inhibit the participation of any user while keeping the list as
organized and effective as possible.
A variant to this third hypothesis would be keeping the "English
Translation Appreciated" policy while setting Interlingua as the
official language of the list, thus promoting a better future and
setting the example.
I suspect that a quick survey of Interlingua speakers on the list will
turn up very few.
I agree with what someone (Christian?) said about keeping postings
accessible to as many people as possible, not just the original poster
and those responding. At the same time, given how useful (critical?)
the list is as a resource to users, I do think we need to make it
accessible to all users. Rather than asking responders to translate
posts, I would suggest that we simply ask anyone whose English is good
enough to post their messages in English. If someone lacks the
necessary English, or would have to spend considerable time translating
their message (as I would if this were, say, a German-speaking list),
then let them post in their native tongue and receive responses in it,
with the caveat that posting in something other than English reduces the
number of potential respondents. If a responder feels that the response
contains content of significant value to others and not available
elsewhere (for instance, it's a bug work-around not previously posted in
English), the responder may voluntarily provide an English translation.
P.S.:
Regarding the history, AFAIK, English was not the native language of
the original LyX developers. However, English was, and still remains,
the language used to communicate between the developers. At the latest
LyX developers meeting I think there was one Finn/(Dutch?), one
Norwegian, one Swede, one German, one French and two
Portugese/(Italian?). AFAIK, none of them has English as a native
tongue:-)
We are talking about *users*, not about developers that might choose
what language is more operative by different criteria. Those criteria
shouldn't be imposed to *users* just because...
I think the point of this was to demonstrate that English as the
official list language was not imposed by native English speakers.
/Paul
