Fate of HTLAL (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Fate of HTLAL
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion	( Topic Closed)

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Ogrim
Heptaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 4638 days ago
991 posts - 1896 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian

Message 153 of 178

12 August 2015 at 9:42am | IP Logged

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

And I would also love to see more vivid discussions. Right now I feel at a point where the limitations make me unable to breathe. Like Josquin I have come to a point where the 89th question on whether to chose French or Spanish fails to catch my interest, and I would have loved to see discussions on life, death, love, politics,
religion and cultural differences. Do I want anyone to be treated with disrespect? No. Never. Not for any reason. But the basic notion that hearing views that you disagree with, is disrespect, makes me want to empty the content of my stomach. We have two ears and only one mouth for a reason, and it is when I hear views that I disagree with, even views which I find deeply offensive, that I learn and grow. This could have
been a place where we could have learned so much from each other, learned about the different cultures and why people think the way they do. We have chosen for it not to be, because of self imposed limitations. We could have quarreled, fought, screamed at each other, and yet loved each other at the end of the day. And
learned, and gotten more insight, and even yes: Actually made the world a better place. If anyone could have, we could have.

One of my most beloved song writers, Tom Lehrer stopped writiting songs when Kissinger and Le Duc Tho received the Nobel peace price, considering that the absurdity of life went beyond the absurdity of his own songs. I am starting to understand his point if view. Sitting in Moscow and hearing people questioning the motivation for why people want more free speech makes me lost for words. And I am not often lost for words.

I will try to limit myself to my blog and to whatever frivolous threads I can think of starting. And try to remember why I love to come to this place. To have fun. Do you even remember when we last had fun?

Solfrid Cristina, I respect and admire you, and in the past you have contributed to this forum more than most, but I totally disagree with you on this issue.

How can you see this as a question of free speech? If I want to discuss politics or religion, there are plenty of places where I can go, Internet is full of discussions on just about everything under the sun. Some of them are intelligent and decent, but too much of it is just rabid fanatism, insults, foul language and ad hominem attacks. If I have chosen to stay at HTLAL, it is precisely becuase A: it is what it pretends to be, a place to talk about language learning, and B: because it has clear rules of conduct and therefore discussions are mostly civilised and to the point.

My son plays in a football club. It has rules. He has to behave in a certain way. He has to respect the coach, the referees and the other players, both on his own team and on the teams they play against. Foul words and insults can lead to immediate expulsion. Is that an infringement of his right to free speech?

Furthermore, it is not like no discussion is allowed on this forum. There have been a lot of vivid exchanges without the moderators censoring them, unless they really got of-topic or became an exchange of personal insults. And I've seen people commenting on political topics more than once, especially in their logs.

If a majority wants to turn this forum into something else, where instead of talking about language learning and experiences with languages, we can "quarrel, fight and scream at each other", well, then I will post one last message of goodbye and spend my time doing other things. Because I do not think it is fun to quarrel, fight and scream at other people, whether it is in person or on the internet.
9 persons have voted this message useful

Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5782 days ago
781 posts - 1310 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

Message 154 of 178

12 August 2015 at 9:53am | IP Logged

Ogrim wrote:

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

And I would also love to see more vivid discussions. Right now I feel at a
point where the limitations make me unable to breathe. Like Josquin I have
come to a point where the 89th question on whether to chose French or Spanish
fails to catch my interest, and I would have loved to see discussions on life,
death, love, politics,
religion and cultural differences. Do I want anyone to be treated with
disrespect? No. Never. Not for any reason. But the basic notion that hearing
views that you disagree with, is disrespect, makes me want to empty the
content of my stomach. We have two ears and only one mouth for a reason, and
it is when I hear views that I disagree with, even views which I find deeply
offensive, that I learn and grow. This could have
been a place where we could have learned so much from each other, learned
about the different cultures and why people think the way they do. We have
chosen for it not to be, because of self imposed limitations. We could have
quarreled, fought, screamed at each other, and yet loved each other at the end
of the day. And
learned, and gotten more insight, and even yes: Actually made the world a
better place. If anyone could have, we could have.

One of my most beloved song writers, Tom Lehrer stopped writiting songs when
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho received the Nobel peace price, considering that the
absurdity of life went beyond the absurdity of his own songs. I am starting to
understand his point if view. Sitting in Moscow and hearing people questioning
the motivation for why people want more free speech makes me lost for words.
And I am not often lost for words.

I will try to limit myself to my blog and to whatever frivolous threads I can
think of starting. And try to remember why I love to come to this place. To
have fun. Do you even remember when we last had fun?

Solfrid Cristina, I respect and admire you, and in the past you have
contributed to this forum more than most, but I totally disagree with you on
this issue.

How can you see this as a question of free speech? If I want to discuss
politics or religion, there are plenty of places where I can go, Internet is
full of discussions on just about everything under the sun. Some of them are
intelligent and decent, but too much of it is just rabid fanatism, insults,
foul language and ad hominem attacks. If I have chosen to stay at
HTLAL, it is precisely becuase A: it is what it pretends to be, a place to
talk about language learning, and B: because it has clear rules of conduct and
therefore discussions are mostly civilised and to the point.

My son plays in a football club. It has rules. He has to behave in a certain
way. He has to respect the coach, the referees and the other players, both on
his own team and on the teams they play against. Foul words and insults can
lead to immediate expulsion. Is that an infringement of his right to free
speech?

Furthermore, it is not like no discussion is allowed on this forum. There have
been a lot of vivid exchanges without the moderators censoring them, unless
they really got of-topic or became an exchange of personal insults. And I've
seen people commenting on political topics more than once, especially in their
logs.

If a majority wants to turn this forum into something else, where instead of
talking about language learning and experiences with languages, we can
"quarrel, fight and scream at each other", well, then I will post one last
message of goodbye and spend my time doing other things. Because I do not
think it is fun to quarrel, fight and scream at other people, whether
it is in person or on the internet.

Or we could keep the rules on politeness to stop the bickering and
allow a certain amount of political discussion as long as it status
relevant to the language-related topic of the thread, which would of
course come down to the judgement of the mods. We actually have a really good
moderating team here, why not use it a bit more.

As I tried to say in my earlier post, with certain legitimate topics you can't
really avoid politics completely, what you end up with is conventional
political wisdom going unchallenged. The dangers you describe are real but
nothing that can't be deadly with by good moderation.

Edited by Random review on 12 August 2015 at 9:56am
4 persons have voted this message useful

PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5475 days ago
821 posts - 1273 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: French^B1

Message 155 of 178

12 August 2015 at 9:58am | IP Logged

Random review wrote:

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

Luso wrote:

@ Josquin:

There was no sarcasm involved. Actually, it was supposed to be quite the
opposite: a compliment.

First of all, I consider you to be one of the most helpful members of this
forum. When I was participating in
TAC with German (once or twice) you were always present to help us, often with
correction of long texts,
along with extensive explanations of what correct German would be. Believe me,
the idea of offending you
couldn't be farther from my mind.

Second, I singled out this example because I've been tempted to use the same
kind of wording more than
once, when some non-native decides to throw obscure articles and "studies" at
me about the language I've
been using all my life. What's more, a few times I've had the cooperation
(never the opposition, as far as I
can remember) of some of the Brazilians in this forum. But, as you know, some
people are not easily
deterred.

Third, it was just to show how a person from a different background could fail
to display the public confidence
and directness you did in that instance.

Fourth, your post above only illustrates what I meant to say: you're not
afraid to stand for your points of view.

Fifth, I could have written most of your post myself: the "directness", the
"mild expletives", the "boring", and a
few others.

All of this having been said (and, I hope, clarified), I cannot apologise for
any sarcasm or irony, because there
was none intended.

Of course, you can be offended and / or irritated if you think I misquoted or
misrepresented you in some way
(albeit involuntarily). If that's the case, I'm sorry.

I'll end this like I began: it was meant as a compliment.

I hope this settles it. If not, you can always let me know (here or by PM).

I also understood this as a compliment to Josquin and to the art of calling a
spade a spade, I am happy that I
interpreted it the right way.

And I would also love to see more vivid discussions. Right now I feel at a
point where the limitations make me
unable to breathe. Like Josquin I have come to a point where the 89th question
on whether to chose French
or Spanish fails to catch my interest, and I would have loved to see
discussions on life, death, love, politics,
religion and cultural differences. Do I want anyone to be treated with
disrespect? No. Never. Not for any
reason. But the basic notion that hearing views that you disagree with, is
disrespect, makes me want to
empty the content of my stomach. We have two ears and only one mouth for a
reason, and it is when I hear
views that I disagree with, even views which I find deeply offensive, that I
learn and grow. This could have
been a place where we could have learned so much from each other, learned
about the different cultures and
why people think the way they do. We have chosen for it not to be, because of
self imposed limitations. We
could have quarreled, fought, screamed at each other, and yet loved each other
at the end of the day. And
learned, and gotten more insight, and even yes: Actually made the world a
better place. If anyone could have,
we could have.

One of my most beloved song writers, Tom Lehrer stopped writiting songs when
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho
received the Nobel peace price, considering that the absurdity of life went
beyond the absurdity of his own
songs. I am starting to understand his point if view. Sitting in Moscow and
hearing people questioning the
motivation for why people want more free speech makes me lost for words. And I
am not often lost for words.

It looks like the deluge happens on August 22nd. I disappear to Siberia and go
off line that day, for which I
am right now deeply grateful. I am hoping that things will have sorted
themselves out by the time I get back.
And that whatever happens and wherever we end up, it will be in an environment
where we do not have more
limitations that we need to.

And like a good little Norwegian I would normally have apologized for any
offense anyone might feel, but if
there is anything I have learned from Russian culture it is to speak my mind
and not pussyfoot around the
issues. If that makes you feel I am a troll, then be my guest. Trolls are a
Norwegian invention, anyhow. And
this Norwegian troll will from now on try to not even follow this discussion,
as it interferes with my studies and
makes my otherwise excellent blood pressure rise to dangerous levels. I will
try to limit myself to my blog and
to whatever frivolous threads I can think of starting. And try to remember why
I love to come to this place. To
have fun. Do you even remember when we last had fun?

I too wish we could talk about politics. I'm not suggesting that we turn this
place into a political debate forum but equally you can't separate life from
politics because everything connects. So many language discussions have to
pass through politics to do them justice (file sharing, the issue of dialects,
language death, prescriptive vs descriptive grammar, etc) and if (like here)
ban all political discussion, what you get is actually one political view (the
mainstream) reigning supreme. I've lost count of the number of times on here
someone has said something as if it were incontestable because it's part of
mainstream conventional wisdom and I've thought, " hold on, that's actually a
political view and shouldn't just be uncritically accepted like a law of the
universe".

As far as the rules on politeness, etc are concerned, I think it's a case of
"swings and roundabouts" as we say in the UK. I'm a member of another forum
where the rules are far more relaxed (basically don't say anything racist or
illegal, don't deliberately troll or flame) and it definitely leads to more
bickering. It has pros and cons.

I quoted everything but its too fiddly to narrow down on my phone...

.... on "you can't separate life from politics becsuse everything connects"

Thst's a home-run. I absolutely wholeheartedly utterly entirely agree.

Edit: There's been many a time i've wanted to talk about languages in the sphere of language spread,
language policies, globalisation, education and so on but have refrained as one of my previous threads
became locked as it was deemed too political. My feeling was that politics pervades nearly all aspects of
human life and ignoring it plays right into the hands of those in power. In my opinion those in power know
they are moving policies in a direction that is controlling all areas of human activity. If we chose to ignore it in
the sphere of languages then its al the more likely that globalist style (unofficial) policies will continue to
weave their nasty web of deceit (one world, one government, ultimately ONE language).

On another note I was thankful for rdearmans alternative HTLAL.org site, but am not liking necessarily his
stance on content (he'll shut down anything he feels is out of order). I can totally understand where he is
coming from and in fact respect his decision as it's his to make, but in terms of where I'm coming from... no
sir, I don't like it (ie respectful disagreement).

PM

Edited by PeterMollenburg on 12 August 2015 at 10:24am
3 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 156 of 178

12 August 2015 at 10:56am | IP Logged

Even I think there's a lot of room for respectful disagreement. As long as it's language-related or directly relevant.

Rdearman only warned that he'll have to be careful because the laws in the UK are different. (any idea if the Swiss laws can affect FX the same way? If he comes back it might turn out that preventing copyright violation is not his only legal responsibility here) Reserving the right to remove any fishy comments that might get him in trouble doesn't mean he'll silence everyone he disagrees with.

Edited by Serpent on 12 August 2015 at 10:59am
1 person has voted this message useful

kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4888 days ago
1386 posts - 3054 votes

Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

Message 157 of 178

12 August 2015 at 12:44pm | IP Logged

Solfrid, you are not even close to being an internet troll. Trolls engage in flame wars - they make posts that
are designed to incite fights. They don't engage in honest discussion, and instead remain deliberately obtuse
& often misstate what others say just to keep the fight going. They threadshit - i.e. dominate a thread by
arguing with every single other poster. And they eat poor little billy goats.

I've always seen you as a peace keeper. I've never seen you try and encourage a fight. I don't know how safe
baby goats are around you, but I wouldn't judge.

I'd like to see a forum we could fight laugh and love too. In my experience that doesn't work on the Internet.
People say they want open discussion, but I am convinced that would result in a forum where every post
about Arabic turns into an argument about I.S., where every post about English into an argument about
colonialism and imperialism, every post about Turkish into an argument about the Kurds, every post about
Russian into an argument about the Ukraine, etc.

And I'm not even exaggerating - I've seen it happen. There have been deleted posts in the past couple
months where each of those started to happen here. It only takes a few perpetually angry single-issue
posters to bring a forum to that point. So I don't see this as an issue of 'certain views make me
uncomfortable.' I have some pretty strong political and (anti) religious views myself. It's that unmoderated
forums get ugly fast, and rarely get to the laughing and loving part once it starts.

7 persons have voted this message useful

Josquin
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4843 days ago
2266 posts - 3992 votes

Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish
Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

Message 158 of 178

12 August 2015 at 1:38pm | IP Logged

@Luso: Okay, thanks for clarifying this! I wasn’t quite sure how to read your comment and I have a tendency to suspect sarcasm where there is none. Bad habit, I guess, but I can’t shake it off. Sorry if I have caused any confusion, but I’m glad you agree with what I wrote! Thanks for the kind words!

Random review wrote:

Yes but, Josquin, you are aware of these cultural differences and that many English speakers aren't, why not try and be a bit more tactful? To me the word bullshit doesn't just imply that the other person's argument is deeply flawed, it also implies a complete lack of respect for the person with the flawed argument. That's why it hurts so much.

Okay, while the word "bullshit" may sound a bit harsh to a native English speaker, I still have to point out that I’m not a native speaker of English. If I told a person they were talking "Schwachsinn" in German, this wouldn’t be an insult. It would be disrespectful, but not an insult. Sorry, if I didn’t get the implications of the word "bullshit" right. However, I have to repeat: What’s the point in your complaining about my conduct? The insulted person didn’t complain, in fact they didn’t even seem to bother what I called their theories.

Random review wrote:

Also it's all very well you saying that you don't concoct theories about a language you haven't learned to a reasonable level using Wikipedia articles, well I in contrast would. Part of the joy of languages is not just learning to speak (etc) but also seeing how things fit together and relate to the history of the language, so if I come up with an idea I find interesting, of course I will want to share it. Few people (certainly not me!) have time to learn every single language that interests them in this way to a decent level.

Okay, if I had the idea the preterite tense in German was imported from Low German, because Upper German dialects have lost it, I might open a thread and pose it as a question. However, in the thread in question, the OP wrote the following:

LanguagePhysics wrote:

I have read that outside of Northern Germany, it is rare to hear the preterite used in everyday spoken language and the present perfect is used almost exclusively other than in a few basic verbs such as "sein".

It seems outside of Northern Germany there is no real concept of the preterite existing in the spoken language and it is something that is reserved only for formal written language. In fact, it seems it could be argued that the only reason the preterite is in frequent use in Northern Germany is because of the influence of Low German upon the way High German is spoken, as Low German makes frequent use of the preterite which can be seen in the way Dutch makes frequent use of the preterite.

That considered, it seems the argument could be made that High German as it was originally spoken before being the national language of Germany didn't really have a preterite form and the reason the German language does today is because it has been standardised based on the way people in Northern Germany speak, which has been influenced by Low German and its heavy use of the preterite.

The OP departs from the statement they have read something about German, which leads them to some wild theories about the usage of the preterite in German (which are wrong) and it’s historical reasons (which are complete nonsense). As I said, my daily work is discussing theories and proving their validity, so I voiced my criticism very directly. I’m sorry if I got carried away, but I’m only a human being as well.

Random review wrote:

Of course 9 times out of 10 such theories will prove to be nonsense, and if someone such as yourself corrected me by explaining why my ideas are wrong, I'd be very grateful; if however they instead said that this idea that had so interested me and that I was so excited to be sharing was bullshit, I wouldn't be grateful at all because they'd have just made me feel about two inches tall. If this happened a few times, I probably would stop posting, yeah.

I hope you don’t think this is my usual conduct in discussions. Anyway, as I said, I might have got carried away, so I’ll try to behave differently the next time. However, as I said, it’s exactly this cocky behaviour of stating half-baked theories with a lot of self-confidence which regularly gets my goat.

Serpent wrote:

It also seems like the ones not having fun are those who get less enjoyment out of discussions of linguistics/polyglottery/methods. And it would certainly be great to have more topics on themes like travel and culture.

That’s exactly the point! I don’t study languages, because I want to find the best version of Assimil for this language. I study languages, because I love foreign people and cultures! It would be great if we could talk about this a little bit more often, but the "no politics" rule makes it difficult.

You can’t study Hebrew seriously without dealing with the history of Israel. However, I’m not allowed to talk about it on this forum. You can’t even study Irish without being confronted with the language politics of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland and their bloody common history. Yet, it’s a no-go topic here.

Also, I don’t study languages because I love Anki, it’s because I love languages! However, real linguistic discussions have become seldom here. And when there are some, they revolve about topics like "Are the Indo-European languages more corrupt than other language families?". This kind of nonsensical trolling is allowed, while I can’t even discuss the politics that caused the decline of Irish. Sorry, when it gets this bad, I’m out of here! And people are still wondering why this forum doesn’t attract any new members any more.

The only group whose needs this forum really caters to is the language afficionados who learn languages as some kind of sport, get satisfaction out of discussing methods and materials, and push each other to studying more by doing challenges. My favourite thread that reflects this attitude was some days ago on HTLAL.org: "How to crack Turkish?" As if a language was some magic code that needed to be cracked or a mountain that needed to be climbed in an act of superhuman effort. As if I got some satisfaction of my ego by "cracking" the mysteries of a difficult language. My only answer would have been: "By studying it."

Anyway, people who really want to discuss linguistics, socio-linguistcs, literature, and foreign cultures get pushed out of this forum more and more. Thank God there are the logs where people can write about themselves and what interests them! It’s the only interesting part of the forum. Following people like Chung, kanewai, iguanamon, Iversen, Cristina, AlOlaf, VonPeterhof, or tarvos is what makes me come back again and again.

Maybe, opening the forum to politics would cause mayhem. But perhaps we could get a little bit more relaxed and not panic every time the discussion remotely touches on anything political. As I said, I learn languages because they are spoken in the real world and not because I love textbooks.
5 persons have voted this message useful

iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5261 days ago
2241 posts - 6731 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

Message 159 of 178

12 August 2015 at 1:50pm | IP Logged

Thanks for the kind words, Jasquin. I agree with kanewai. Things would go downhill fast. For an example of what can happen to the forum: Remember COF? COF would post about languages or language learning but only to troll. COF then went too far and started to dominate the forum's "General Discussion" section with posts designed to troll and finally was banned. Then COF came back as, I kid you not, TobaccoSmoke, and was promptly banned again. Have a read of some of the posts.

The great thing about HTLAL is that people feel very comfortable and welcome here, precisely because that's the environment created by the policies in place. So people talk about language-learning but soon tire of discussing courses and techniques and want to add personality, because they feel comfortable. They feel comfortable because no one is allowed to attack them personally. There's no name-calling. No belittling and no disrespect. People disagree without being disagreeable for the most part. So, then people may feel that because it's such a nice place that people will also be respectful of their political opinions as well. That's not necessarily so. It can and probably will escalate quickly, leading to hurt feelings and alienation. It eventually leads to people leaving the flamers all to themselves so they can search for a new refuge.

Start talking about your opinions on globalization, immigration, imperialism and neo-imperialism, Russia and the Ukraine, for example, and a can of worms gets opened that will lead to bad feelings and nothing productive. I can go to twitter or the comments after news articles for all of that. I'd hate to lose members like Christina and Josquin, but I wouldn't want to visit a forum every day to read about people's opinions on controversial topics.

There are ways to talk about topics of interest without injecting a lot of personal opinion. Literature, culture, and the real world can all be discussed. It just takes some thought. Think twice, post once. When people make declarative statements about subjective and controversial topics as if it were THE TRUTH, that's when the trouble starts.

I have talked about language policy in Ireland and the UK with Irish and Welsh on the forum. I study Ladino, which cannot be discussed without religion. The expulsion from Spain created the Djudeo-espanyol language. The Holocaust, 450 years later, practically destroyed it. What I don't do is talk about my opinions on these subjects. I don't inject my discussion with personal asides. These things happened. There's no need for me to editorialize about it.

Perhaps, with the ability to create and run a cheap forum, someone can create an off-site "not the real HTLAL politics and religion forum pub" or a facebook group where people can find each other from here and go there and sound off online on everything and anything. Maybe that would satisfy. I won't be popping round for a pint though. I'd like to keep my illusions that we are all decent, wonderful people :), as I am sure all of us are.

Edited by iguanamon on 12 August 2015 at 2:44pm
10 persons have voted this message useful

tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5865 days ago
979 posts - 1688 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

Message 160 of 178

12 August 2015 at 2:38pm | IP Logged

Most people come here to learn languages. A few too many come here just to argue.

I support "discussion" and "learning" on any subject, and I respect and encourage
differences of opinion. But bickering, arguing, personal attacks, foul language and anti-
social behaviour have no place here.

For example, I have no problem with discussing foul language words or expressions, but I
am totally against the use of foul language in discussions. Foul language is a crutch for
those who lack the ability to communicate effectively.

For those who come here just to argue, please go elsewhere where arguing is welcomed.
Here, we want to learn languages.

5 persons have voted this message useful

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