chat, official language

Smaro,

if you will talk Dutch and your friend from France that does not speak Dutch comes and neither you speak French, then you can simply switch to English. If you personaly want other people to easily understand what you talk about and let them join the conversation or you want to speak with people that do not speak any language you speak or whatever, then use English. No one will discourage you. That is your choice. But you cannot force others speak English if they want to practise other languages than English. They don't have neccessarily to speak in their mother languages, there can be a bunch of people that practise, let's say Swahili, so they speak in Swahili and practise it. If there are people in the chat that do not practise Swahili, they practise languages they learn, for example Tagalog, so they speak with each other Tagalog to practise it. If the first or the second group wants to speak with the other one, they simply ask what language they speak, or possibly they'll use English, because as you said, almost everyone speaks English a little bit. There is no point to speak the same language if the people do not have anything in common or what to speak about.

Sincerely
joey_h

Comment written by

joey_h on Jul 11, 2007 @ 16:36

Want to give a reaction on Joey's comment.. “ using of English does not mean that we will understand each other.”

When I talk Dutch in the main chat room and my friend from France comes in the same room he wont be able to understand the whole conversation. If i were chatting in English that person could be able to understand me. The other people can just read and probably understand where I’ m talking about. Some languages are just to difficult to translate and on the net are lots of websites where you can translate English to your own language. Plus Most of the people have a English dictionary... And that's not the case with let me say... Turkish… I don’ t have a Turkish dictionary in my house.. Or an other example people from China for them it’ s really hard to understand something of the Dutch language or an other language.

My point is that most of the people can understand English or at leased a bit!!!

Comment written by

Smaro on Jul 10, 2007 @ 22:56

Luke,

I do understand what you mean, believe it or not, but the point is, you can't demand using English because you want to know what they are talking about and possibly be able to join the conversation, it should be up to the people to decide whether to use English so others could join the conversation or not. On the other hand nothing and no one can stop you from politely ask the persons to speak English, because you are interested in their chat and want to join the chatting. That is what is it about - communication.
As you pointed right out, there are private messages, so as I said you can use them if you get lost in your conversation with someone in the main among the other chat text. Also I don't think the chat would become 'less chaotic' while all would speak English (or try to speak).
The intention of the chat are languages, nothing more, nothing less.
Of course, there is the problem willem1940NL pointed very accurately out, but that is for another discussion, as he said.

Sincerely
joey_h

Comment written by

joey_h on Jul 10, 2007 @ 21:26

I think the languages chat MUST remain "polyglot" i.e multi-language. Another thing is, that supervision should always be prepared to kick certain bunches of youngsters who repeatedly kidnap the site as their own 1-language shoutbox, meanwhile humping all Private boxes to molest bonafide users .... guess most of you will recognize the phenomenon.
Æok uzuldum.

I usually enter using English, hence looking what more I can handle or help.

Comment written by

willem1940NL on Jul 10, 2007 @ 20:59

Hello!

Personally, I agree with Joey. The purpose of the IRC channel is primarily to practise/exchange language - by proposing and utilising English as the "default" language, it's taking away some of the freedom that the room delivers. It would be extremely unfair to "force" some to learn more English (even if they don't wish/need to study English) just so they can converse in the #polyglot channel.

I think that the current system for languages in the chatroom works fine and that it should remain how it is - without English as the "default/official" language.

Comment written by

Callum_ on Jul 10, 2007 @ 20:59

Dear Joey,

I'm not angry because I don't understand some other languages....True this is a language practising-chat, but still you can practise languages by using English as means of communication.If you really want to practise in your native language with someone you could use msn as smaro said.

It's also not about prohibiting other languages, but just about understanding what others're saying.Everyone knows at least some basic English btw....At least enough to ask whether there're people who speak the target language.When people speak many languages at once it would be quite a chaotic chat.

Maybe people aren't insulting you or whatever, but you still don't understand what others say, this can't be the intention of this chat.

Regards,

Luke

Comment written by

Amsterdamseg on Jul 10, 2007 @ 20:38

Actually as I do not take care of the chat (thanks to all the polyglot chat admin ), I am not really the one who should have the last word but the chat admin.

Among others, Joey and Ashra have a good experience since they've been administrating the chat for years

vincent

Comment written by

vincent on Jul 10, 2007 @ 20:18

Smaro,

using of English does not mean that we will understand each other.
Don't forget it's language practising chat.

Sincerely
joey_h

Comment written by

joey_h on Jul 10, 2007 @ 19:55

I totally agree with this Topic! If English become the main language we all ll be able to understand each other and comment that...

Still if you want to chat in a other language you can chat in private or use an other program.. like MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger.

Let's keep it fun for everybody and even when your English isn't so good just try it!! Like me maybe I made a few mistakes in this comment... but i tried it!!!

Comment written by

Smaro on Jul 10, 2007 @ 19:46

Hello,
Altough it seems as quite good idea for first look, I cannot agree with it for several reasons.
The main reason is that the chat is meant to be for language practice. Of course, people can speak in private, but that is not purpose of the chat, to isolate other languages from English. Also, there can be more than two persons wanting to practise a language, in private there can be only one and one, they can make a new room, but this again takes them off the official chat. (Not talking that not everyone is familiar with IRC).
As for the first point, I don't understand much what you mean. If you mean your conversation with someone is "interrupted" with chat of other persons in other language then if you want to have a pieceful conversation, use private. And it would not be polite when the chat was not a language practising chat.
For the second point. If anyone would want to talk badly about you, he/she could do that through private messages and in English, too. On the other hand there's higher chance that on the main someone speaks that language and recognizes that someone is talking badly and can inform the chat operator. And if not, what is the difference between not knowing that someone is talking badly about you in private in English or in main in other language you don't understand? I think we all want to learn/practise languages and that assumes we are intelligent humans which means we should apply the presumption of innocence and we don't misuse of unfamiliarity with a language. And to be angry because you don't understand a language, well...
For the third point. It may be easier for people to join the conversation if they speak English or are able/willing to speak it enough to have a good conversation.

I agree English is a worldwide language (I love it as a language, but hate it as a worldwide language) and maybe one could demand its knowledge, but not all can speak it (well, in the end that's the purpose of the chat, to practise languages, including English, eh?) and at last not all want to learn it. There are millions of people speaking Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, etc.
I agree with English being the official language for communicating with the moderators/operators and other Polyglot chiefs. (But not at any cost, see above)

Again, it's a language practising chat, I don't see any use in using only English in the main chat. And generally it is wrong to force using of any language, especially on a language site.

Accept my apology for any possible mistakes in the text or if I concieved some thoughts not understable enough as I am not a native English speaker, thank you.

Sincerely
joey_h

Comment written by

joey_h on Jul 10, 2007 @ 19:14

I agree with you indeed
and i am not english native speaker also

Comment written by

vincent on Jul 10, 2007 @ 18:10

I forgot to add, people can always chat in their native language by private chats.

Comment written by

Amsterdamseg on Jul 10, 2007 @ 01:09

all right!

Comment written by

sky_knight on Jul 10, 2007 @ 01:06