[Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?

[Ronald Chmara]

On May 26, 2005, at 3:50 AM, Anthere wrote:
> Nod. Most of your arguments are valid to me.
> But, reading them, I thought of asking a question.
>
> > 4.  Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of
> > English-speaking regions.  There is little or no need for most US
> > citizens to ever speak another language in day to day life.  While 
> this
> > may or may not be a bad thing, it is a true thing nonetheless, and 
> that
> > being the case I'm not surprised if US citizens tend to pay little
> > attention to matters that involve other languages most of the time.  
> The
> > same cannot be said so easily of other languages (with a couple of
> > notable exceptions, perhaps): Europe, for instance, consists of a 
> large
> > number of countries, many of whom have their own associated languages
> > largely distinct from the languages of their neighbors, and yet much 
> of
> > Europe would fit within the borders of one of the larger states in 
> the
> > US.  This forces a certain amount of multilingual awareness on
> > Europeans, whereas the opposite tends to be true of Americans, pretty
> > much through no fault of their own.
>
>
> Since you are focusing more on an american perspective, though english 
> is the only official language in the usa,

Not true. We (the USA) lack an *official* national language. Depending 
on the state, 1-5 languages are used. Compare to the EU.

>  many more or less recent immigrants only poorly manage english.
>
> When I lived in Arizona, I was in the part of the city most inhabited 
> by  teachers and students, as it was the city where the university was 
> located (Tempe).

I'm a 'zonie too. Down in Tucson, Spanish skills were required where I 
grew up.

 > However, what was striking is that most of this area was inhabited by 
mexican immigrants, some legal and some illegal; and many of them did 
not manage english well, or even not at all, as they only recently came 
in.

Again, see the EU.

> So, my question is this one, and it is addressed to spanish editors as 
> much as english ones. Do you know how much impact the spanish 
> wikipedia has amongst spanish speakers in the usa ?

You are creating an artificial separation, based on something trivial 
and meaningless as the language used.

>  Are they participants amongst rather recently immigrated people ? Do 
> you know if there were some articles on wikipedia in spanish speaking 
> american press (I suppose there is press in spanish) ? Or radio 
> interviews ?

Does it matter?

> I know there are sometimes some little disagreements between the 
> spanish editors from Spain and the spanish editors from latine 
> american.

Try editing "Cuba".

> Are they some fully spanish editors from USA ? And what is their 
> representation in the USA media ?

I think you miss the point. We are dealing with *many* cultures, *many* 
languages. The concept of the "chair" can be expressed in thousands of 
languages. Omitting one language, or culture's, concept of chair, is 
bad.

-Bop
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