Rosetta Monk revisited...

Howdy!

While visiting Sweden, I observed that the common greeting was (or sounded like) "Hey!" (which I suspect is spelled hej). Being the monolingual 'merican, I replied with "Hello" to cue them...

I took four years of French in high school, and about a semester of Japanese in college...I remember bits and pieces. I manage to read most romance and germanic languages with a some success (at least in the references I am trying to read), but that only goes so far...

Lingua::Romana::Perligata is a real hoot! I showed it to friends and they were rolling in the aisles in appreciation.

Me, I tend to stick with "Howdy!" these days...

yours,
Michael

Japanese: Ohayô gozaimasu, Kon'nichi wa, Konban wa, Sayônara. (Good Morning, Good Day, Good Evening, Good Bye)
Swabian: Grüß Gottle, Adee. (God Day, Good Bye)

Hanamaki

I certainly agree with your thoughts about being exposed to other cultures and cultural idioms. I believe there is a great deal we individually take for granted and that, by learning the things that others take for granted, you expand your own awareness, knowledge, and understanding about others. In turn, this makes you a richer person, for you can at least understand more than your local idioms.

This set of articles from the Associated Press discuss the recent spread of English as a common tongue as well as some concerns about that spread. They make for interesting reading on the phenomenon.

Locally, I don't mind it when folks converse in different languages in CB. Sure, I usually wish I know what they were saying, but I tend to figure that if I really want to know, then I'd best get myself to the local community college for some classes. Similarly, I really don't mind when people pose questions in other languages. After all, BabelFish does a reasonably decent job at translating the major languages to English. It's usually enough to get the point across. (I've recently, with the author's permission, been using it to translate articles on a French site into English for inclusion on a site I run.)

I would ask, though, if people do post in another language, that they indicate which language it is. While French can be reasonably obvious, there are other languages that aren't necessarily so. For example, Portuguese and Spanish sport a number of similarities. Not many, perhaps, but enough to be confusing to a translation device. Similarly, there are variants of Spanish (Castilian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and so on). It might also help if a multi-lingual monk could summarize the main points for the rest of us.

While English questions will usually garner the most responses, I can imagine siutations where posting in one's native tongue seems the best way to get your point across. There are many needs and, while we may not always understand why someone considers something important, I believe it's best to respect that person's belief in that importance.

--f

Personally I wouldn't mind it if people asked questions in other languages - though if they did I would appreciate it if someone offered a translation. (And hopefully a translation back of the best answers.)

However I have to admit that I would probably weary fairly rapidly if some enterprising monk were to take to translating the best questions and answers into another language and posting those.

As for cultural imperialism, I can offer no good solutions. The amount that English imperialism in programming is taken for granted first became clear to me when TheDamian pointed out that when he wrote Lingua::Romana::Perligata he had no body of theory on how to parse inflected languages to draw on. Positional languages? No problem, English is positional. But try to identify the role of a word in a sentence by doing it like languages from Latin to Russian to Sanskrit? You are on your own.

And a final random note. I challenge anyone here, native speaker or not, to honestly say that they can read this poem aloud correctly on the first try...

Much more troublesome to me is the cultural unification that English, especially American, brings along. The language itself isn't a problem, but the pervasiveness of American Geek culture at the expense of any other is a bit tiring at times. More important than reading French or other non English languages in the CB, everyone would benefit from what non American cultures can bring, and that doesn't happen a lot on English-speaking American-centric forums.

Perhaps I can shed a little bit of light on why so many (it seems) Americans don't speak anything other than English. The bottom line is most don't care to learn anything beyond what is absolutely required of them. I'm from a very rural area of East Tennessee (Powell Valley, to be exact) and my high school graduating class was ~60. We were required to take two semesters of a foreign language. There was only one language offered, Spanish. How much Spanish do I know now? Very little. I remember a few phrases, some of the grammatical rules, but that's it. In my youth, I figured this was information I'd never need, so I didn't put forth much effort. This, coupled with the fact that the quarter back for the football team was in my class, along with a few of his chums, made it a complete impossibly to learn anything even if I was just dying to become bi-lingual. He got his 'D' (the minimum required grade) the year I took Spanish. It was his 3rd time taking the class. Get the idea?

/\/\averick
perl -l -e "eval pack('h*','072796e6470272f2c5f2c5166756279636b672');"

Ovid, I think I know which conversation you are referring to. What happened was that several monks were having a small conversation about the computer game Starcraft, when two of the participating monks suddenly started to speak in french... about Starcraft. No one had a problem with it, but it made the conversation very confusing. I think that was the reason that someone requested that they switched back to English. Hopefully, no bad feelings came out of this.

Well, being the 'monk' who "politely asked them, in French, to speak English" I second you with the fact that no bad feelings came out... I just asked that because French gets too spoken around me, and I don't feel very comfortable with it, because, well, I don't like the language very much...

anyway, No Bad Feelings at all ;-)..

---

He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life.

Chady | http://chady.net/

A Swiss is visiting Sydney, Australia, pulls up at a bus stop where two locals are waiting. "Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?" he asks. The two Aussies just stare at him. "Excusez-moi, parlez vous Français?" he tries. The two continue to stare blankly. "Parlare Italiano?" No response. "Hablan ustedes Español?" Still nothing. The Swiss guy gives up an drives off. The first Aussie turns to the second and says, "Y'know, maybe we should learn a foreign language." "Why?" says the other. "That guy knew four languages, and it didn't do him any good!"

-- stefp

The chatbox is used for short lived informal conversations and quickly solving a problem. There is little standard to follow there including of languages. Admittedly if there are too many conversations in too many languages we will need some threading and selection devices. But we are not yet there.

The rest of perlmonks is material that is here to stay. I would not like to see a balkanization here. Now, I am able to get most of the material that is posted. I may make a fool of myself with my broken English but I am still able to get my ideas thru. This way, I am able to be part of a large and thriving communauty.

If one wants to contribute in his own language, perl mongers sites will be a better place. If they reach a certain size, perhaps they will support perlmonks like features. Knowing English is probably a stiff barrier but this is almost the most important command ground of the Open source movement. We can translate the documentation in many languages, write in C, Perl or Python. But the identifiers are in English. So one has to learn English. That's what I did when I started to dabble with UNIX (not open source at this time) because my school level was so low. In a sense that was an opportunity because I would not otherwise have the courage to learn English.

-- stefp

It is wonderful that we have so many multi-lingual (polyglut) members of the monastery. We can all benefit from different culture and should not be deterred by lack of understanding.

I speak, read and write in Italian, Russian and American. Yes American is it's own unique language. I speak to my children in Italian only. I want them to have part of my cultural background, since we live in the midwest and I am originally from Buffalo NY. The language is "in their blood." To see different languages in the CB only serves to enhance everybodys understanding.

My wife is 100% american. Since I speak only Italian to the children, she has learned to understand Italian quite well. We went to Italy in 2000 and she understood 90% of what was going on. Since she understands that much I can't get away with any chicanery. So the more posts we see in foreign languages, the more we will come to understand them.

I think designated "language" monks would be an excellent addition to the monastery. How many times have you lurked, or just gave up because when you typed "Does anyone here know English" no one responded? If anyone needs Italian or Russian help please let me know.

Great subject Ovid!