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Negativity | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5311 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 25 of 60 25 November 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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The great majority of negativity doesn't really seem to come with the language-learning, but with the ideology and politics that people tie to languages. There should really be a separate forum for that sort of discussion.
Having a separate forum may not fit the general purpose of this site, but it would be much better than the current trend of people putting in little political comments or jibes into their otherwise language-related posts, and sparking arguments. It would be very difficult to root out all the little bits of posts which do that, and I think that the only way to effectively prevent it is to give politically-charged people some sort of outlet in the forum. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 25 November 2010 at 4:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6891 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 26 of 60 25 November 2010 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
This is the reason why I don't bother contributing to these threads - because you always get some muuppet coming along and telling you why the list someone else has chosen is a waste of time and what they really need to be doing, in their not-so-humble opinion, is actually do the list they've picked out. There are plenty of reasons why I might choose not to study certain languages but that doesn't give me the right to inflict my opinions on someone else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5122 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 27 of 60 25 November 2010 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dear Sprachprofi,
I agree with everything you say. This should be the one place where one should not need to be tough, but where one should have encouragements. I do urge people to think before they make judgements on other people's choices of languages or methods. What is right for you may be wrong for someone else. Often what you intend as a good advice, may be hurtful to the person even when it is well intentioned. And lets face it: Not all comments are well intentioned... We are dealing with people from many different cultures. They may have different linguistic interpretations of what is being said, since one of the parties may not be reading/writing in their mother tongue. We must take extra care not to hurt or insult anyone. Because we all want this to continue to be our favourite place on the web, right :-) And Sprachprofi, for the record: You are a big inspiration and role model for me. If I ever decide to learn Esperanto, you, Fasulye and Volte will be a big part of the reason why. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 25 November 2010 at 5:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6258 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 28 of 60 25 November 2010 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I never intended to bring race into it. I now came up with "nerdy kids", but I wrote that post while suffering from insomnia at 3am and couldn't think of a better choice of words. What I actually meant was a metaphora for how this forum treats any inquiries about Esperanto so differently from inquiries about any other language. All threads are swiftly moved to the Esperanto corner, no matter if people talk about language programs, language methods, have questions about the language or any part of it, are asking for advice about learning it... and the majority of posts in the Esperanto corner are bashing it. Sometimes I really get the impression that Esperanto is not welcome in the picture that this language forum presents, even though Iversen, Professor Arguelles, Volte, formiko, Fasulye and other forum greats all speak it (and ellasevia, doviende and jeff_lindqvist do to some extend). EDIT: Thank you, Solfrid Cristin. I've received a bunch of messages and together you made my day. :-) Edited by Sprachprofi on 25 November 2010 at 5:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5218 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 29 of 60 25 November 2010 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me that the subject of racism here at HTLAL is a red herring that stems from a poor choice of words. Let's move on. Otherwise, the problem of negativity in the forum seems to be concentrated in the area of Esperanto. Since it's not a major interest of mine (for the time being), all of this is rather new to me. That said, I really don't think that there's any real problem of intolerance in this forum. We all have very different backgrounds, opinions, politics and ways of expressing ourselves. We share certain interests but differ on various topics. This to me is normal. I really don't see a problem.
I know there are thousands of members here at HTLAL, but when you look a bit carefully, you see that there is a relatively small number of what I call hard-core members. I wouldn't want to throw a figure out, but week after week we see the regulars in certain threads that are of interest to them. I don't think we could imagine a thread about word-lists without a contribution from Iversen. Or Michel Thomas and Cainntear. If somebody mentions Rosetta Stone, then all hell breaks loose. Sure, there's been some rather acid comments from time to time--and I've been part of them--,but I really believe that we are generally a congenial and welcoming bunch of diverse people who share a common interest in language self-study and in helping each other. Edited by s_allard on 26 November 2010 at 11:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5133 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 30 of 60 25 November 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is really silly. As far as I can remember, no one has attacked you for speaking or learning Esperanto. Opinions different from your own have been offered, nothing more. You need to accept that not everyone thinks the way you do, and this being a discussion forum, you'll be exposed to views different from your own. The discussion in the Esperanto thread was entirely civil and substantive arguments were presented from different sides. What is the problem then?
According to you we wouldn't be able to discuss anything here, because not everyone thinks all languages are worth learning or appreciates them equally. Same goes to methods, strategies, language-learning series, etc. Next thing, someone will start a thread denouncing "negativity" towards Teach Yourself or Rosetta Stone, complaining that this should be a "safe place" to discuss those methods. I will refrain from commenting further about Esperanto and I suppose anyone who is not an enthusiast will feel inhibited form doing so as well. It won't take much of an effort, as it is not something that interests or concerns me much at all. I just hope we don't turn this forum into a kindergarten where we can't, civilly and respectfully, contrast and compare our differing views on everything about languages. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5616 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 31 of 60 25 November 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the largest part of the Esperanto problem stems from the fact that, being a conlang built for political
reasons, it is more strongly politically charged than many other languages (and you can see that other more politically charged languages such as Chinese and Arabic receive more negative attention, too). There is an unfortunate tendency to assume all esperantists share the exact same political motivations and are all fanatics and evangelists of said beliefs. Posts that are made with this assumption as their basis quickly become embroiled in nasty arguments. What I really don't understand is why people frequently see the need to start new threads making the exact same arguments against esperanto, when those topics have already been discussed to death and are there for anyone to read at their leisure. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6258 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 32 of 60 25 November 2010 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am sorry, Juan, saying Esperanto is not a language and comparing it to armpit noises
will not fit any definition of civility, especially as hundreds of forum members are invested in Esperanto and there are Esperanto native speakers reading this forum as well. If you personally do not think that Esperanto is worthwhile learning, then that is your opinion which I respect and am not even trying to change. I respect anyone's right not to be interested in Esperanto but I'd like some people to be a little more respectful of our right to be interested in it as well. Do not imply that it's in any way a less legitimate interest than Icelandic or Swahili, or that it's less fulfilling for those who learned it, because we each have different criteria for languages we'd learn and different things that make us happy. Even with the same criteria we may have different opinions on whether a language fulfills them, and that is something we can try to discuss in a civilized fashion. I started this thread because it is my opinion that we should never voice it if we think that a language that another member is learning is a waste of time; it cannot be anything but a personal opinion and it cannot but offend the member in question and all those who study the same language. This is not limited to Esperanto, as the "20 languages" thread and similar ones showed. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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