Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
Svip wrote:
I guess I am too busy maintaining my own wiki as
well. Maybe a choice
to attract editors would be similar to that of the Swedish and
Norwegian wikis. That, and I'd like to see more appreciation of the
Danish language from the Danes themselves. I hear Dutch is under the
same criticism from the Dutch themselves.
This is interesting. My understanding is that even compared
to the Danes, the Dutch are hugely internationally minded.
In Science Fiction fandom circles I have heard of an "8person
rule of thumb" (though I admit the rule may hive more general
application within Dutch society) - whereby within spoken
communication situations, if there is one native English speaker
present, there have to be at least 8Dutch speakers present,
before even the most private comments by the Dutch speakers
will be made in Dutch.
I can speak from a bit of personal experience here. Between the Dutch
chapter, Jan-Bart, and people on the technical team like Mark and Roan,
the Dutch were well represented at the meetings in Berlin in April. At
one point I decided to invade a table full of Dutch speakers, maybe not
eight but close to that number, partly just to see what would happen.
(Personally, despite speaking both German and English, and Dutch
occupying a linguistic space vaguely between the two, I can barely make
out the occasional word in spoken Dutch, although I have a little bit
more ability to comprehend it when reading.) Anyway, everyone was quite
willing to switch over to English without any trouble, although some
Dutch was still used occasionally for conversations I wasn't directly
involved in.
For the English language, I think the underlying problem is a bit
different. Often we native English speakers never really learn any other
language, and by reason of not learning how things are framed in
comparison, end up neglecting the quality of our own language, though we
use it constantly.
--Michael Snow