[Foundation-l] Re: Crazy desires

Wed Nov 10 18:43:47 UTC 2004

Anthere wrote:

> It is significant that I have been registered to this mailing list for 
> months, and never participate, for it takes me to much time and energy 
> to read the messages and even worse to answer to them.
> I use my mother language on purpose and hope that all english people 
> here would make an effort to understand a message in a language which 
> is not their mother language. Perhaps then would you perceive how 
> difficult it is to assist to debates in a foreign language without 
> mentionning how difficult it is for you.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation should be more open to non english people 
> since it is recovering a multilingual project.

I agree with the sentiment in general, but I don't see how else we could 
do things.

I speak two languages fluently: English and (modern) Greek.  I can post 
to this list in either.  If I posted in Greek, almost nobody would be 
able to read it, so I don't.  If you get people from Greece, Germany, 
France, Japan, and Spain all into one room, what language can they 
speak?  English is the only language that has a chance of being even 
partly understood by all those people.  It'd be nice if everyone could 
post in Greek, Japanese, French, Chinese, or German as they wish, but 
very few people can read all those languages.

-Mark