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Multilingual forum | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Multilingual Lounge |  | |
| Mga Groupie United States beastie.redirectme.n Joined 7123 days ago 67 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Arabic (Written) | Message 17 of 35 28 July 2006 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I do not want this post to be taken as advertising, because it is not. If you see it that way, please re-read it again with the intent in mind that I am just offering my opinion.
On the forum of the language learning community UniLang, things are organized quite similar to what is being discussed. People are encouraged to post bilingually, and people actually do. I'd say that the majority of posts in the main language forum and the language specific forums are all bilingual. One of the languages is almost always English, the other being (one of) the languages the poster is learning (of course, this may be English, too!). Outside of the language specific forums, posts are only sometimes lack an English translation, and I see no reason why a rule couldn't be enforced limiting such posts to the language specific forums. On UniLang, there are quite a few language specific forums, and they are created when needed and a native (or, sometimes, advanced learner) is available to moderate. Almost all posts in these forums are bilingual or in the target language, and there are often single threads for individual posters and a single discussion thread where people talk about learning the language and have more general conversations in that language. I am not saying we should all forget this forum and move to UniLang. Quite the opposite. I am just saying that these ideas have been implemented elsewhere, and they do work very well. (Why do my posts always seem to start new pages?!) Edited by Mga on 28 July 2006 at 2:06pm 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 18 of 35 28 July 2006 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've been a member over at Unilang for some time (although I find the discussions far less engaging than the ones here) and I know what you mean. While it is quite nice to see posts written in various languages, the point I raised in an earlier post still holds true : we haven't all been learning the same languages. And while we'll still have English to rely on, I can't really see the point of having multilingual posts outside of any language-specific subforum. Even if it were not compulsory, how many of us here would actually take the time to write all of our posts in the various languages we're studying or already know?
Perhaps I'm just being lazy but I don't relish the thought of having to write my posts in any of the other languages I know. I'm not all that confident of writing my posts in Mandarin or Dutch as I would have to spend too much time checking my grammar and spelling. I wouldn't mind practising my written skills in a language-specific subforum or thread but when it comes to general discussion, I'd rather stick to the only language I can claim native fluency in. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brendan Newbie New Zealand Joined 6784 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 35 28 July 2006 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Great to see some feedback on this topic. Like the Administrator I would not like to see any drop in the wonderful content and tone of current posts. I must say though that it is intriguing to read some of you suggesting we should stay in the default language as this is the common one, and hence the most practical one. In response, why bother learning other languages in the first place?
Much as I love browsing the topics, very little is actively helping my language studies as all posts are written in English, my first language. However, if posts were written in other languages, yet to be decided, then my (and your) French, German, Spanish etc would be getting a work out. Personally I favour the open use of language across forums rather than creating new specific language areas. Currently I live in China and am learning Chinese, but I know enough of a few other languages to read and perhaps even write in them. I would prefer to do this regardless of the topic, ie for the general discussions too. Obviously we don't all speak each other's maternal language(s) so maybe there needs to be an English translation as well - that is a burden for posters which I am fully aware of, but it would be invaluable to the rest of the membership trying to learn that language. Let's be creative, we spend enough time learning, how about some production time? And finally, I'm not sure if I'm breaking the rules,but, Monsieur l'Administrateur, je voudrais bien poser la question, quand peut-on commencer? Merci beaucoup. 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 20 of 35 28 July 2006 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Fair point, although I must say I don't personally learn other languages to write posts on discussion forums in them. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brendan Newbie New Zealand Joined 6784 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 35 28 July 2006 at 6:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for mentioning UniLang as it is new to me.The bilingual posts you talk about is a similar idea to what I had in mind. My initial impression, which may well be wrong, is that UniLang is dominated by non-English native speakers, while here is the reverse. Hence here there is a reticence or inertia to step (speak) beyond the comfort zone of the English language. Like Mga, I certainly do not advocate moving away from here, all I'm interested in doing is promoting the use of our languages. Mine are sadly in decay, and reading about them, rather than in them, doesn't reactivate them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Will Senior Member United States Joined 6938 days ago 165 posts - 165 votes | Message 22 of 35 28 July 2006 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I guess the onus would be on the forum visitor to have their browser set up to display all language fonts properly, as an example Chinese and Japanese. Because if their browser is not set up correctly they will see a bunch of rectangular boxes in the general discussion forum topics where those languages are posted.
You haven't been able to locate forums, or web sites, or courses specific to the languages you are learning elsewhere? Or material (Web Sites, Books, Audio) in the languages you know already to prevent them from decaying? I guess if I were to cast a vote I would vote for this one:
At least if you are heading to the Chinese or Japanese room you know you need to have your browser set up correctly to view the fonts. Edited by Will on 28 July 2006 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7315 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 23 of 35 28 July 2006 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I also agree with #4. An advantage to creating language specific rooms is that they would attract members who have things to contribute but aren't confident enough to write in English. I think 5 or 6 extra language specific rooms would hardly overcrowd the forum. Since French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Mandarin are the top non-English target languages on this forum according to Francois' statistics, it would be natural to choose these languages first.
As for character encoding, I believe it would be possible for the administrator to set the encoding of the Chinese room to "Chinese Simplified" by default, so we wouldn't have to keep switching our browser settings back and forth. The same should be true for Japanese. 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 24 of 35 28 July 2006 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't particularly like how UniLang made almost a hundred subforums for each language. I don't really think we should have subforums, but if we do, I suggest that we group them by language family. There are not that many French posts - maybe group them together with Spanish and Italian.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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