[WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

Fri Nov 14 14:27:17 UTC 2003

Charles said:

> It is being argued that xiangqi (Chinese chess)
> is appropriately labelled 'chess variant', when 
> it predates chess and can't be a variant of it. 
> So it's like saying soccer is a 'gridiron variant'.

We had a big dust-up over our Football article last year, which I helped
mediate. It was finally agreed that "football" refers equally to
American-rules football and to "soccer". In the US, 'football' nearly
always means the American-rules game (pointy-ended ball, forward passes,
lots of tackling) while "soccer" involves kicking a round ball into a
net. Outside the US, where by the way most English-speaking people live,
the word "football" almost always refers to round-ball game (also called
affectionately "footie").

It took us several weeks to finally get this straight, but it was done
with goodwill, intercultural sensitivity and a healthy dose of humor.

I hope we can try a similar approach to the issues you are raising.

Ed Poor
Culturally Sensitive American