Re: French

thank you very much for your post ! (ich bin also kein Untermensch !!
-I say it with humor but at the beginning it was a real slap in my
froggy face)

could you clear :      ":D"  ;  not everyone's cup of joe  ?



Le 20 janv. 09 à 20:35, Paul Kershaw a écrit :

>> From: Michael Poxon <mike@...>
>> Surely the problems are many - if someone posted in Swahili, most
>> of the group
>> would have no idea what the post was about, and surely that
>> defeats the whole
>> purpose of a discussion group. If most of us don't understand
>> something, how can
>> we discuss it? The clue's in the word! :-)
>> There's also the problem of elitism - it may be just intuition,
>> but I suspect
>> that some people have felt "out in the cold" with the French
>> thread since their
>> French wasn't up to it.
>> Mike
>
> I wouldn't say two problems are "many." ;)
>
> Problem the first: Sure, it's a discussion group. If someone posted
> in Swahili, then only the people who could read Swahili (of which
> there are many in the world, but probably few on this list) would
> be able to comment. The poster wouldn't get many useful comments,
> and would quickly find themselves switching to a more common
> language. As to the language currently under dispute, French, there
> are apparently quite a few people on this list who read French
> (myself included, although slowly). The discussion doesn't include
> everyone, but enough people on the list to keep it flowing. Many of
> us who can read French can't write it well enough to justify doing
> so, so those responses are in English. Unless there's sufficient
> critical mass of French posting to keep it going, eventually the
> French posters will revert back to English. Problem solved by
> linguistic democracy. :D
>
> Problem the second: Again, recall how this issue started in the
> first place: Someone whose native language wasn't English was told,
> in barely more political words, that his English was substandard
> and that he ought to write in French. Little seems more blatantly
> elitist to me than to suggest to someone that they oughtn't post in
> an English-only forum until their language skills are up to snuff,
> because some people won't be able to work out what's meant. My
> point being, I think there's a good flow of linguistic elitism in
> multiple directions.
>
> Personally, I think it's cool to have posts in languages other than
> English show up in my inbox. :D If it's a language I have some
> knowledge of (French, German, or Spanish), I'll have a go at
> reading it. If it isn't, I'll skip to the next post. I realize
> that's not everyone's cup of joe, so whatev. I'm not planning on
> posting in any natural language other English, so it doesn't matter
> that much to me, I just don't think it's any more elitist to carry
> on a conversation in some other language than it is to tell someone
> to say it in French because their English is incomprehensible.
>
> (Also, to keep my third noted problem in the mix: It's certainly
> possible that two people who speak a language that nobody else on
> this list speaks could carry on an obscene dialogue insulting the
> rest of the group. I'm not sure why they'd want to do such a thing,
> though.)
>
> -- Paul

Replies