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Multilingual forum | ||
Tags: Multilingual | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Multilingual Lounge |  | |
| siromar Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6745 days ago 104 posts - 103 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Swedish | Message 9 of 35 26 July 2006 at 8:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm in favor of option 4, and I think we can make it so it'd be viable to most members. Let me suggest what exactly I have in mind.
a) Every question related to the language is allowed in its forum, even if it's asked in English. b) Popular languages get their own board. We can have Spanish, French, German, whatever. Other languages shouldn't be left out, but they should be grouped in categories. So in addition to the 3 or 4 main languages we can have forums like: "Chinese, Korean and Japanese", "Asian Languages - other", "Scandinavian Languages", "Romance and Germanic Languages", "Slavic Languages", "African Languages". Of course the word "other" means other than the ones with a dedicated forum. This way 8-10 boards can cover most languages, and they are general enough to allow broad participation. Edited by siromar on 26 July 2006 at 8:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 35 26 July 2006 at 9:11am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not too happy with the idea of accepting English in the language specific boards (OK, it should be tolerated, but only as a last resort if somebody feel it is too daunting a task to formulate a difficult thought in the target language). After all the aim is to create something different from the other boards. You might even tempt less-than-perfect writers to slip back into English in a situation where they could have managed to formulate themselves in the language(s) of the board. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6906 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 11 of 35 26 July 2006 at 9:17am | IP Logged | |||||
I think we are talking at cross purposes..or I didnīt get what the administrator meant...his idea no.4 was to create subforums where people would write ONLY in the target language.. and therefore beginnerīs questions wouldnīt fit as they would probably be written in English.. right? It would be simply "enlargement" of topics such as "Spanish thread" or "Swedish thread" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 35 26 July 2006 at 10:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am in favour of option number 3. Currently I don't see many people actually using these "target language" threads. So I think that if we open up new subforums that serve the same function as target language threads, they would not be very active and the result could end up being like the Multilingual Lounge.
In addition, I think forum members should be able to start target language threads on a specific topic. For example, "Spanish thread - Mexican culture". I think this is already permitted, and a more viable alternative to subforums. I think a few members raised a really good point about using subforums to group beginner questions, discussions about a specific question. I have seen an overwhelming number of Spanish questions and topics, and it would be quite convenient to group them in a suboforum, even though the "keyword" function was supposed to have served that purpose. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6857 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 13 of 35 26 July 2006 at 11:20am | IP Logged | |||||
I think that whatever you all decide is best, but my vote is for number one, but I won't be insulted if I'm the only one who thinks this way. I get a kick out of making sense out of things that make no sense to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6857 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 14 of 35 26 July 2006 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure if multilingual posts would even happen. I think by and large, we would naturally default back to English, as that appears to be the common language. Perhaps some of the rules could be softened in some of the other forum categories. Perhaps General Discussion could be limited to English, but others, like Beginner forum, Practical Self-Study Questions, Specific Languages could be open to all languages. I mean, naturally, if I had a question about Spanish, I think I can reasonably assume that those responding would be Spanish speakers. So would it really matter if I asked in Spanish or English? Would non-Spanish speakers really object to me asking a question in Spanish? On a language learning forum? Likewise, I doubt anyone would respond in Polish. I think the language use would be self-regulating. I also think that because we are all language lovers, we are naturally open to all languages, even those we don't understand. Okay, how about this: you can start a thread in X language, but that thread must remain in that language (with English as a back up), but you can't suddenly jump in there and start speaking Y language. I think that would be rude. So let the first post in the thread set the language, with English available in case there are misunderstandings (assuming, of course, that everyone speaks English). And this would also open the thread up to those who don't speak the language as well, because you could always ask questions in English. So it would increase the multilingualism while simultaneously being more inclusive. Just a brainstorm of an idea. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 35 26 July 2006 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Katie, you make some good points. However, if you start a thread about, for example, "The relative merits of using CDs against cassettes" in Japanese, then it would be inaccessible to most members, regardless of which language we could reply in.
I was thinking more along the lines that Katie mentioned in the second paragraph of her post directly above this one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6890 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 16 of 35 26 July 2006 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you've raised some very good points and I do like those ideas very much. If I follow you correctly, you'd like to see, say, Spanish (and English as a back-up) used in a Spanish sub-forum but no other languages? I think that's pretty reasonable. It's hard to formulate a question in a foreign language when you've only started learning it so English should be kept as a default language even in the sub-forums if it makes communication easier. I'm with you on pretty much every point you've made. Forums such as the 'General Discussion' and 'Polyglots' should be kept in English (if that is agreed to be the common language) as the multilingual posts may not always work...plus I wouldn't want to have to write out every comment I make in several different languages!. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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