[Foundation-l] Simple Spanish?

Austin Hair adhair at gmail.com
Wed Jun 21 22:41:19 UTC 2006


On 6/21/06, Johan Bos <skatinghacker at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Not as far as I know. I just meant articles in simple Spanish words.
> Readable for people who just understand for example 1500 words.

English is the most widely spoken second language on the planet, the
lingua franca of international communication; it's also really hard.
The argument for the "simple English" editions is that with more
non-native speakers than native ones, a special effort should be made
to cater to those who haven't quite mastered this undoubtedly
difficult tongue.  While I don't agree, I do recognize the validity of
that point of view.

While Spanish may have more native speakers, it doesn't enjoy the same
ubiquity, and its mostly regular syntax means it doesn't pose the same
difficulty to novices.  You seem to acknowledge the second point
yourself when you talk about "sencillo" as nothing more than a
limited-vocabulary edition of the Spanish Wikipedia.

We're only just starting to recover from the damage done by the
infamous Enciclopedia Libre fork, and I can't see anyone supporting
any division of those efforts right now.

Austin



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