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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."
Who gives a shit?
America is not the centre of the world. Diversity is ok. Multi-culturalism is ok.
Interesting point.
Americans only do this in real life.
Klingon? mubelmoH Holraj *rgh* wab.
Who gives a shit.
Sorry, you have it wrong about English being the language of Diplomacy. The Official language of the United Nations is French, which has long been regarded as the language of Diplomacy.
...And the most spoken language in the world is Mandarin. Just a quick google gives some rather interesting figures:
Thus there is no reaonable way you can expect everyone to know Portuagese, or any other language. However you can have a reasonable expectation that most people will have at least a functional proficency in English. Thus, if you wish to communicate with a worldwide audience, English is the language you should choose.
Language Speakers(Millions)
Mandarin 885
Spanish 332
English 322
Arabic 235
Now, you tell me, why shouldn't we all have Mandarin as our second languages?
Percentage wise the do own the place, so you should really just suck it up.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
Here's Orkut's stats as of today: 43.76% brazilians vs. 22.2% americans. Given that rude and stupid people are an internationaly available commodity, it is more likely to see some brazilian person being a jerk in Orkut. As someone already said here in this very thread, it _is_ a netiquette issue. Orkut comunities _do_ have a "official" language in its description. I really think it is just a matter of way too much free time in the wrong hands. If someone starts a thread in english, someone else replies in portuguese (or any other language, for thar matter), the first someone asks to the second someone to write in english, because, hey, that's the "official" community language and the second someone can only reply with some lame ass, totally out of context excuse as "You invaded Iraq for no good reason. I shall invade this community for the very same reason" (Believe me, I've seen it), the second someone should not be labeled as "those f**kin brazilians", they should be labeled as "those f**king morons", regardless of the nationality.
There is no one in the world worth speaking to, who doesn't speak english.
Whether it's in business (everyone speaks english), government (everyone speaks english) or whatever.
All other languages are below english on the importance of learning scale. Why? Because America is the greatest, most powerful country in the world, and people want our stuff.
-jg
I would have punched the gooks in the face
That's something you see a lot. Dutch tourists are good at it. In a shop in a foreign country, they ask something in dutch. If that doesn't work, talk louder and finally shout what you want.
The thing is in places with many dutch tourists, eventually this will work...
Privacy is terrorism.