I'm sitting here in lemming's house typing away on his computer while he and his wife are at Burning Man. While I'm not exactly sure how lemming so clearly wound up getting the better part of the deal, I'm lucky because, while housesitting for him, I get to play on Perlmonks and he's stuck in the desert drinking beer, frolicking with scantily clad people and ... oh dear ... I guess I'm not as lucky as I thought.
Ahem. Back to the topic at hand.
A couple of French monks were in the Chatterbox doing their "parlez-vous" thing when another monk asked politely asked them, in French, to speak English. It seemed to me that the two French monks were having a chat that was between the two of them, though any who could speak French was free to follow along (though I have no idea what the heck 'becanes' are).
While the French monks in question did switch to English, I commented "Moi, je ne parle pas français très bien, mais si un 'monk' veut le parle, pourquoi est-ce que c'est une probléme?" This translates as "I don't speak French well, but if a monk wants to speak it, why is this a problem?"
Why is this a problem? Perl is used all over the world. So why should Perlmonks be an "english only" resource? At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, we all know the benefits of standardization. Many computer manufacturers have manufactured excellent computers only to watch them die because they're not compatible with the machine language that runs on Intel chips. Like it or not, many view Intel as the 'standard', in this area. Let's face it, standardizing on English has some benefits.
When I worked in Amsterdam, the standard in the office was English. My father tried to convince me to take a sales/project management position in Germany. He assured me that English was enough; I didn't need to know German. Another individual encouraged me to apply for a job in Italy for the position he was vacating. You guessed it. They spoke English in the office. Many companies seem to view English as the way to go.
Frankly, I view this as a disappointment. I like to be exposed to other languages and culture. Though multi-culturalism often results in the compartmentalization of cultural groups, it can expose us to other points of view that are worthwhile to know. Perlmonks has primarily been an English-only site, but I'd like to see more contributions in other languages. I don't know how others feel about this, but the topic is now open for discussion.
If others see a benefit in trying to offer this resource to those who do not speak English well, is there a way we can implement this without Perlmonks becoming a confusing polyglot of tongues? Personally, I'm thinking something along the lines of having the language identified in the title, as in this node. It would be easy to implement and would not require extra work on vroom's part.
Cheers,
Ovid
Update: Oh, and as a small practical joke, be sure to /msg lemming about the vast quantities of scotch that he owes me for making me housesit for him while he's a Burning Man :).
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