Should non-English speakers post in their native language?

Not at all, but since English is the standard/common language of the forum, then that is the basis from which we are going to work from.

If this was the Fox Forum, I’d say that Chinese would be the standard/common language of the forum, if this was a Japanese server, then it would have been Japanese, and so forth.

When you go somewhere else, the most reasonable thing is for you to adapt to the situation that exist in that “somewhere else” that you went to.

For example, Greece is visited by tourists all over the world.
What is more reasonable? For some tourists to learn the words “Hello”, “Good morning”, “I’d like some help, please” in Greek and then know a common language that is most likely to be widely spoken by both the locals and the tourists, like English? Or for all the Greeks to know all the languages in the world and carry automatic translators for every language? :sweat_smile:

Similarly, when I went for a trip to Swden I tried to learn some basic simple words like “Hello” and “thanks” and after that, I talked to everyone else in English. I think that it would have been very awful of me, if I spoke to them in Greek and had the expectation that they’d get an autotranslating tool to accomodate me, while I was in their country.

But we all have the same online tools, so how does that work?

I am not sure what you mean here. Could you please elaborate?

Oooooooh, that was amazing! I didn’t think of that, but I so wish that I had. :smiley:

This reminded me something funny that had happened in real life:

This is from the 73rd International Expo of Thessaloniki in 2008:

Someone ordered the phrase: “Association of Trade Representatives” in Latin characters, meaning that they’d like that in English.

The sign reads “Association of Trade Representatives in Latin characters”, in the Greek language and in Greek characters. :rofl:

The sign, as you can see, was not taken down and no organiser really noticed it, until someone took a photo and uploaded it on the internet for everyone’s amusement.

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I don’t think so. See the recent difficulties in the OGS forum.

I know your level of English. I would translate if only I think you chose your language for some difficult concept to translate, and I highly doubt this is the case here (I thought this would be obvious to you).

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No, I chose it just to make the inconvenience of the concept practically visible.
Instead of having my point made in English, for all to read, now if anyone wanted to read my post, they’d have to individually seek out a translator service, which I still think that it is a very rude thing to do,

Languages are just not the same and the concepts that are conveyed through them can vary, even if it is the same person writing both versions of the text and trying to make the same point. You might notice that I tend to write shorter and more crisp sentences in English or at least filled with commas. In that paragraph I wrote in Greek (7+ lines) there was only one full stop and it was just at the end, where it was mandatory, along with one single comma. (incidentally that is a writing style that schools here punish heavily, but I wouldn’t change it even after many years of barely getting a passing grade on the “Essay and Language” lesson)

That is one of the reasons why I actually chose to write my Go book in English first and then translate it to Greek, instead of doing the obvious “I’ll write the book in my own language first”. Instead I chose my second language, since that was the style more suitable for the work at hand.

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When I was in university, there was a Bulletin Board System (BBS, basically pure text ASCII-based forum) for university students (they used to have different BBS for different universities before my time, but they got integrated eventually), and there were all kinds of boards(sections, and subsections, sub-sub sections, etc) for almost everything and they were manage top-down (that is if someone want to create a sub-board, they can ask the board above them for permissions, etc.)

And there are boards for weiqi, sub-boards for different university clubs, local clubs, etc. And there were “foreigners’ boards” which they could post in their own languages as they like for foreign exchange students. (If you want to post on those boards using Chinese, you can, but it all depends on the “mods/administrators”(and they were often “elected” by the people in voting sections instead of appointed or volunteered) of the sub-boards.

This would be the equivalent of China towns or Korean towns in that country for tourists in your analogy. We can very easily do similar sub-sections for those who want to post in their own languages.

Is this explicitly written somewhere? Or is it assumed?

If I visit a foreign country I’d definitely learn a few words of the language in that country. But if someone comes to my country and is having difficulties talking in the language here, I would prefer to hear that person talk in their native language and I translate on my side, especially if it’s also a language that I already know. Also, Apple’s AirPods now have the live translation function, so I’ll be more than happy to test it out.

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Every language is accepted on this forum. However since almost every post is in English, people assume they have to write in English.

On the other hand, in a group of people from many different nationalities, the common practice is to speak English since that’s the language most people know.

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I disagree. And English is not my first language.

I come into the forum to talk to people. Goal is to communicate with others. With that goal in mind why would I make it hard for others to understand me.

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Oo we are lucky then!

English is what majority of people use here, but I won’t find in anyway rude if someone wants to write in his own language. No problem with that myself

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As I mentioned, this is only for those who have little to no command of English. If you can write what you wrote on your own, then sure feel free write in English.

I’m curious what everyone’s native language is though, and I still think the method of posting both the translated and the original language is still the best.

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मेरी मातृबाशा हिन्दी है, लेकिन अगर मैं हिन्दी में लिखने लगा तो हर किसी को एक अधिक कदम लेना पड़ेगा अनुवाद करने के लिए। और ये ही भी हो सकता है कि कुछ लोग अतिरिक्त प्रयास ना करना चाहें।

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Sure. Anyway English is quite used in India, even between indian people from different provinces inside India with different languages

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I was just looking at the top few spoken languages globally and it seems that Hindi is 3rd after English and Chinese. So you may very well find other Hindi speaking people here!

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I thought it was Spanish

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Spanish is 4th but they are quite close.

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But there are not many Hindi speaking go players.

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There are very few go players in India in fact

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Well if we talk about the most spoken language among Go players, Chinese will most likely win, so we should all start writing in Chinese here :joy:

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You can go practice on Asian go servers

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The relevant statistics is the languages of OGS users.

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Do we have? I think the statistics of who could be attracted to the forum is as relevant anyway. No need to stay like a small family.

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