Language Tempest At Orkut

Quirk writes "Reuters is carrying an article outlining an ongoing headbutting session between English-speaking users of Goggle's orkut and the Portuguese-speaking users of Brazil. The orkut site has more than 769,000 members; 41.2% are Brazilians and 23.5% are Americans. The sites are now mostly in Portuguese, and English-speaking users are complaining that the service is intended to be in English. Orkut is a service meant to develop by way of invitation, and the Brazilians claim since they are inviting their Brazilian friends it doesn't make sense to communicate in English. Brazilian internet users averaged an estimated 13 hours and 51 minutes in May, eight minutes more than for Americans."

Comments

Why Fight?

[Cavio]

If you are communicating with others in your circle of friends, you should speak the same language.

If I'm in a restaurant, and the people at the table next to me are speaking Korean, it doesn't affect the conversation at my table in the slightest.

I guess we could all switch to Esperanto, the Unitarian Univeralist of languages.

Re:Language barrier

[0racle]

You might have had a point if English wasn't the accepted norm for international communications and just something the States imposed on everyone. However English is the accepted language, so it makes sense that sites that are targeted at an international audience use English or keep everyone apart and just have localized versions. Not that I really care, I'm never invited to anything.