Re: interlingua

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Re: interlingua
by Eric Laffoon on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @18:00

As someone who only speaks English this is fascinating to read. Okay, I can speak a little Spanish and order a kabap in Germany. ;-) People frequently apologize for their poor English and I think it silly because I would have no hope talking to them in so many native toungues. However my recent trip to Germany was very eye opening. Yeah it was fun and there were a lot of great people... but walking down the street, me being from the US, with people from Romania, Poland, Germany, Austria, Brazil and other places the way everybody communicated was in English. And everyone seemed to do pretty good with it.

At one point during the conference I overheard someone talking about two people from the same country where one of them had such a thick local accent the other preferred speaking in English with him.

I can only say it is really weird. I would never be so pretentious to tell people to speak English and when I was young I was told Spanish was a better candidate due to how much of the world geography spoke it and how easy it was. However the internet originated in the US and English is the default language of the internet, though localization is great.

So I think the argument for communication among developers in English is certainly reasonable, but I like it better when someone from a non English speaking country in Europe makes the case because it is without bias. ;-)

Related Links

·   Articles on Interviews
·   Also by Eric Laffoon
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Re: interlingua
by Johannes Wilm on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @22:52

Yes, I agree that English is the best language to be used here. But I hope you can also understand how annoying it is that you have these uber-people walking around that have English as their "native language" and that at any given meeting will call the shots as they simply respond quicker. On top of that, their English might be just as far of from standard English as the average German/Scandinavian in the meeting, but they are just talking a "dialect", while the German/Scandinavian speaks with an "accent." Having a domain in which some other language is used is for many probably part of a dream of for once being the ones that can speak up with the others going half their usual speed.

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