Le lundi 18 février 2013 à 09:16 +0000, Liam Wyatt a écrit :
So... Apparently this is where you are expected to write something that convinces people you have a firm grasp of English. Unfortunately, this is a written test, not an oral test - because an oral test might be quite useful. I know many people from my own country and other English-native-speaking countries that are officially literate but when asked to speak in a formal setting (or even semi-formal situation like Wikimania) are incapable of clear enunciation, diction, grammar, intonation, accent and speed. Certainly, they can be understood by *other* native English speakers but they have no concept of how difficult it is for non-native speakers to understand them.
Perhaps a mandatory class for native speakers before the conference entitled: "Speak English, like, more good 'n stuff for all y'all. Mmm'kay?"
And why not propose an "introduction to esperanto[1] and why it would be by far a beter solution than using english in all international conferences" ?
Seriously, there's so much time and energy spended to learn English (but any native langage would give you problem, I suppose) as a second/third language around the world for such a poor result that even someone who have no problem to write an academic text can't be understood by other non-natives when he speaks oraly.
This would really be an interesting topic in fact. Clearly the English language is strickly pushed by/for economical reasons, not because it's an efficient communication tool like it's suggested in an answer by geni[2] to "New proposal for a wiki Project!" to preserve minority languages.
So reasons why we use English on this list is obvious for now, but promoting a constructed international auxiliary language and aiming (as a long term project) to make it the default language for Wikimedia mailing lists and international meetings, to me it sounds like it would fit with the “imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge” goal.
Now I hope no one will read this message as a diatrib against English, I think every language have is genius[3] and I don't believe there are better or perfect language. But I do believe that for specific goals some languages may be more or less fitted.
So please, really don't take this message as an attack against anything or anyone, I love you all! I just hope we may better understand each other through a communication mean more fitted to our community diversity. :)
[1] Or any language as efficient for international communication the community would prefer (and you know it can't be a native one). [2] To be fair, here is the relevant quotation :
As language minorities mostly live in rural areas they are perfectly adapted to their environment and in their linguistic world/lexicon
there are more concepts and ideas than people from the cities have.
English can deal with concepts ranging from the Australian outback to the housing projects of Detroit to CERN. Minority languages can only be compared logarithmically (assuming they have the concept of logarithms).
[3] As in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_%28literature%29 . And by the way, to my mind this sounds like an important point in favor of defending language diversity, in the same time as you promote international communication through a constructed languag.