[Foundation-l] New projects opened

[Michael Snow]

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