On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:17 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote: This *is* a multilingual list. All languages are welcome here. The issue with Meria's messages have been that she's just been saying the same thing over and over again: "please write in Spanish". If she wanted to respond to something in Spanish, that would have been fine. What Thomas says may seem like a joke, but it's actually something that's happened on this list in the past. :-) I remember a thread where I was talking with someone in English while they responded in German. We used Google Translate to figure out what each other was saying and then we responded in our own language. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023

2011/3/8 Casey Brown <lists(a)caseybrown.org> I remember a French case also :-) -- Regards, Huib "Abigor" Laurens Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Austin Hair &lt;adhair(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I'm pretty sure that it's "moderar". <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moderar> That seems to be the translate that mailman uses too. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023

2011/3/8 Victor Vasiliev &lt;vasilvv(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: It's not perfect, but it's better than saying "Victor, speak English or stfu." :-) You use it to get a basic idea of what was said and then respond based on that. In the few times that we've tried it, it hasn't been that much of an issue. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023

John Vandenberg writes: I don't want to anthropomorphize the list, but it's certainly true that having 99 out of 100 messages in English makes people who want to write in other languages feel shy. Most of the deeply eloquent people whose posts I enjoy reading on lists in other languages do not post here; possibly because they don't care for the topic but possibly because it takes more effort to be eloquent in English. And presumably this assumption makes some people not sign up at all. It might not be a bad idea to have a multilingual foundation list where the expectation is inverted -- that most people won't use English unless it is their best language, or they find it necessary to communicate. -- Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266

2011/3/8 Casey Brown &lt;lists(a)caseybrown.org&gt;rg>: I know not everyone uses Gmail, but for those that do: the labs "message translation" extension rocks my world. And yes, please, please write in the language you are most comfortable in (which is English for me, so it's hard for me to lead by example in promoting a multilingual list!) -- phoebe

----- "David Gerard" &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Nini ni lugha ya si Kiklingoni? Ingekuwa kwamba kuwa sawa na haki kwa wote. Au Kiesperanto labda? Alison

Kusema Kiswahili ni kuzuri! Kutoka leo tunataka kuandika Kiswahilini. Huko munakupendeza. Th. 2011/3/10 David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

2011/3/9 Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: I have no objection to people having discussions on this list in any language, and I'm not sure why you would. Unfortunately, it seems like for most languages that would be a bit of an exercise in futility as all active members are fluent in English, but only a fraction of us are fluent in any other given language. If someone makes a post in Serbian expecting an active and vibrant discussion here, they'll probably be disappointed as we don't have a whole lot of Serbian speakers here, and if just one is not interested in that particular topic, it'll die pretty quickly.

On 12 March 2011 14:53, Federico Leva (Nemo) &lt;nemowiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I didn't know about that list. That's very interesting - thanks for the heads up! It is a lot easier to manage a multilingual discussion where all the languages are, to at least some extent, mutually intelligible, though. It would be useful to hear what measures, if any, that list has taken to make things easier, though. They might work more generally.

Ik denk dat dat niet helemaal eerlijk is om zo te stellen - als jij er wat moeite voor zou doen, zou je de meeste andere talen ook prima begrijpen. Hetzij door gewoon langzaam te lezen, hetzij door vertaalprogramma's die op het internet beschikbaar zijn te gebruiken. Het belangrijkste bij meertalige maillijsten is niet zozeer dat mensen er gebruik van moeten maken, maar juist dat er een acceptatie is en een positieve atmosfeer in het geval dat iemand besluit er gebruik van te maken. Wanneer je een bericht vervolgens niet begrijpt, kun je natuurlijk nog altijd vragen om een toelichting. Het enige lastige van meertalige lijsten is dat spelfouten ineens veel grotere consequenties hebben. Met vriendelijke groet, Lodewijk 2011/3/12 Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

Let's assume that you don't know English. I don't know Dutch and Google Translator is my only option. (Similarities with English are not so big, while my knowledge of German is so poor, that it's not useful at all.) 2011/3/14 Lodewijk &lt;lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org&gt;rg>: Sometimes yes, sometimes not. Machine translation systems are not quite good, as well as I am definitely not able to understand Dutch by reading it slowly. I agree here partially. Yes, I agree that if someone wants to say something very important (at least to him or to her) and she or he is able to say something just in some other language than English -- yes, it should be said in other language. However, the most of conversation here is not on that level. It is much about giving not so crucial arguments about many things, like your and my points in those two emails are. If Google Translator has given the right sentence structure, this sentence is not so structurally complex. However, translation is not guessable. May you word your sentence in some other way? (Translation is: The only tricky multilingual spelling lists is that suddenly many greater consequences. ) * * * I've spent 20 minutes for writing the part above. I used the most of the time for trying to understand your words better. It could be an interesting multilingual practice to talk this way. OK, it would be better if I chose Serbian instead of English. Maybe we should try, actually. But, note that it would require much more time for communication, which requires much more dedicated persons. But, again, we don't need to be very fast and very efficient. (I am serious about that.) Also, machine translation engines will become just better and better. So, we will be spending less and less time in misunderstanding each other. And it would calm down atmosphere: everybody will think that it could be misunderstanding somewhere.

On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:37:22 +0100, dex2000(a)pc.dk wrote: This is correct, the sentence roughly translates as "the only problem of multi-lingual lists is that typos suddenly (can) have much more serious consequences". Cheers Yaroslav

There are at least one "multilingual mailing list": Iberocoop<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Iberocoop>… list[1], when people can write in Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. [1]: https://listas.wikimedia.org.ar/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/iberocoop _____ *Béria Lima* <http://wikimedia.pt/> (351) 925 171 484 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer.*** 2011/3/15 Lodewijk &lt;lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org&gt;

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 05:08, Waldir Pimenta &lt;waldir(a)email.com&gt; wrote: I supposed that it is so. However, my point wasn't about inclusion of people from Basque region in regional cooperation -- as I am sure that initiative for chapters cooperation on Iberian peninsula will include them -- but about linguistic issues. And I described that above in relation to the situation in former Yugoslavia. Albanian speakers from Kosovo are in very similar position as Basque speakers from Basque Country are: their language is distant from the surrounding languages and they use regional lingua franca when they want to communicate even on the lists intended to be multilingual. So, nothing organizationally, just about the fact that even on multilingual lists there are more and less equal languages. And that's not because some group wants to discriminate other group, but because it is communication reality.