Polyglots - 2015-12-22

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8:57 PM

This chatroom is intended as a meeting place for denizens of Stack Exchange's language sites: Chinese Language, English Language Learners, English Language & Usage, French Language, German Language, Italian Language, Japanese Language, Portuguese Language, Русский язык, Russian Language, Spanish Language. 迎接, welcome, bienvenue, willkommen, benvenuti, ようこそ, bem-vindos, добро́ пожа́ловать, bienvenidos!

5

we can start by fighting about the name

Why is this associated with ELL?

@Wrzlprmft why not?

Why not Meta?

English is our lingua franca, so it seemed a neutral ground

@Wrzlprmft because we aren't mods on MSE

@Gilles Ah, I see.

9:00 PM

Why not associate it with the network?

that way any language site mod is a mod here, and anyone with rep on a language site has rep here

@Undo what does that do in terms of moderation?

@Gilles It's be like chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq

People are still moderators, everyone still has their rep, but it won't show up in the sidebar on ELL

@Gilles Quid dicis? Ista lingua non est franca!

@Cerberus ouais bon on va pas commencer avec ça

@Undo Ah, ok. Can we change it?

Très bien, c'est mieux, ça.

9:03 PM

@Gilles I can try.

Just a sec

oh, we need an ELL mod to do it don't we?

Undo has added Undo to the list of this room's owners.

Undo has removed Undo from the list of this room's owners.

Yeah, looks like you'd need an ELL mod

Bienvenue à vous aussi, Ms Brilliant.

Or just destroy this one and make a new one.

9:04 PM

(I think Ms is short for Monsieur?)

Or just M.

@Cerberus Just M.

@Gilles I would prefer a more technical name, such as Meta Languages, but my opinion is not very strong.

OK.

<listening to Jaroussky>

Shall we summon all language-site mods now to inform them about this room or should we collect a few topics first?

Did everybody go to a new room?

@Wrzlprmft I think we should seed the place a bit more first

otherwise they'll see nothing happening and lose interest

9:13 PM

Sounds good.

I see two main topics for collaboration: transferable policies, and translations. Translations seem dead in the water though.

@Gilles You mean actual translation requests? Or interface translations?

Language sites face a lot of similar issues: tagging, acceptable questions (dictionary lookup, translations, etc.), meta language, ...

@Wrzlprmft a couple of years ago some people worked on a browser extension to provide a Stack Exchange UI in other languages

Anonymous

Yeah, I was interested to hear that German.SE replaced the translation close reason with two other reasons.

that died out before it became stable, and the people involved have drifted off

9:16 PM

I think such things need to be native.

it may or may not still be useful nowadays, since on the one hand SE now does translations, OTOH they refuse to apply them outside “programming in X”

Anonymous

@Gilles The Japanese.SE interface translations were used as a starting point for the ja.stackoverflow.com localization.

@Wrzlprmft fully agreed

@snailboat oh, was that a thing?

I didn't know

Anonymous

I'm not sure why the Japanese interface is restricted to ja.SO.

This has come up, I think.

Anonymous

9:17 PM

I imagine each language site has a meta post requesting a native language interface.

I find the Spanish interface very nice on es.so, and it feels funny not having it on es.se.

20

Q: Can we have a French user interface? — Peut-on avoir une interface en français ?

Back when this site started, the official status of localization on Stack Exchange was localization is slowly creeping up in priority. But there are no dates to report or even an estimate. There are proposals targeted for other languages, but they are created with the understanding that the m...

feature-request language user-interface

But when pt.se got started, people wants the "native" interface from pt.so, and it was explained why not.

Anonymous

Oh, there was an explanation?

@Gilles I have déjà lu. :)

Remme finder.

Tim Post.

9:20 PM

7

Q: These are our new custom close reasons

From a recent proposal it was clear, that we accepted to have new custom close reasons replacing our existing custom close reason. To go live we need your vote, your suggestions, and your critique on the proposals we collected so far. Please vote, comment, or answer here and help to create new...

discussion status-completed close-reasons

Here, the Tim part is in English.

7

A: Podemos reaproveitar as traduções do site vindas do SOpt?

Talvez a pergunta ideal seja: queremos traduzir o Portuguese Language (PL)? Os motivos para um e para outro são óbvios: a utilização de um idioma automaticamente inibe, ou até impede, a participação daqueles que não dominam o outro. Por exemplo, um falante de português pode pensar o seguinte ao...

Oh, that's automatic. Wrong thing.

@tchrist right link, wrong preview

Wrong CM. Try Gabe:

5

A: Podemos reaproveitar as traduções do site vindas do SOpt?

Os sites de língua da rede são direcionados a um público internacional, não aos usuários que falam Português nativamente, como no caso do SOpt. É uma distinção importante. O PL não tem nenhum tipo de tratamento especial em relação ao French, Spanish, Japanese, etc, só por ter um SO na língua. Os...

but that's not an explanation beyond “we won't do it, sucks to be you”

I know.

> Os sites de língua da rede são direcionados a um público internacional, não aos usuários que falam Português nativamente, como no caso do SOpt. É uma distinção importante.

So it's for an international audience not just native speakers.

Anonymous

9:23 PM

I don't understand why it can't be an option.

I honestly wouldn't mind, having come to appreciate it. But I think the position of the Powers That Be is that it reaches a broader audience this way.

@snailboat Ooh, I like that idea.

@tchrist Is it? French Language would be dead if it wasn't for a bunch of native speakers who are somewhat bored with learners' questions

Same with Portuguese. We have a core of 4–6 native speakers who really keep the site alive.

@tchrist only if the only audience that matters is Usanians

Why do you say that? Not saying you're wrong or anything, just curious.

9:26 PM

@tchrist I'd like to have more French people on french.se

without an interface in French, that's not going to happen

Would a native French interface make that more likely?

I see.

@snailboat And for the motivation behind this: meta.german.stackexchange.com/q/915/2594. I will summarise this if needed, but not right inside another discussion.

Right now we have Spanish and Portuguese and Japanese interfaces from the SO sites, so that would be a lot easier than say French or German. The interface is a lot of work, and it needs a native speaker for a CM.

Plus a backup.

@tchrist I wonder how much stronger this problem is for French due to the clichéic aversion against foreign languages.

I know what you're saying, but certainly the French are better at non-French than Americans are at non-English. :)

9:30 PM

@tchrist No doubt, but there is a strong causal relation to the interface of all our sites being English.

Anyway, I think there are some things that can be done without tweaking the interface.

@tchrist but Americans who want to discuss English don't have to face an interface in French

For CMs, we have JNat and Gabe as native speakers of Portuguese, but I don't think Juan has a backup CM for Spanish. When you get flags and meta posts not in a language folks speak, it takes a long time for things to get attended to.

@Gilles Ouch.

For example, we had our introductury blurb (which you see when you open the site without being logged in / in a private browser window) explicitly state that we are bilingual.

Oh, what a room!

@Wrzlprmft hmm, we should request that

9:33 PM

@Gilles Let me fetch the Meta post

though it's somewhat misleading to say the site is “bilingual” when the interface is monolingual

of course if anybody wants to complain they first have to figure out the English and find the meta site

8

Q: Please vote on new wordings of our welcome text / description of the target audience

Background One of the first things every unregistered user sees on our site is this¹: or this: This proposal for making this welcome text bilingual has gained considerable support, but is unfortunately not easily realisable as it would break the layout due to being too long. This question...

feature-request status-completed new-users

2

Note that there are also some other deficiencies in the welcome text most language sites have and which we also amended. (See this answer for details.)

Anonymous

> Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It's 100% free, no registration required.

> Portuguese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers and learners wanting to discuss the finer points of the Portuguese language. It's 100% free, no registration required.

I want my comma. :)

Anonymous

I like that you put linguists first! :-)

9:37 PM

@tchrist To 'bridge the gap?

Gilles, the French help pages are quite well done.

No, wait, you need no bridge, where you come from.

> German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language.

@tchrist thank you

@Cerberus Where we're going, we don't need bridges!

Because you have the ford?

9:40 PM

@Cerberus woosh

user image

Interesting. France is considered low?

I don't know that the blue states need a native interface, but I bet the apricot ones would benefit from it.

@tchrist Interesting. Who did they test?

I'm from the orange zone.

9:42 PM

I wouldn't have expected Japan to be higher than France, for example

or Poland higher than Germany

Anonymous

Yeah, I wouldn't either.

From here:

EF English Proficiency Index

The EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) is a report which attempts to rank countries by the average level of English skills amongst adults. It is the product of EF Education First, a global language training company, and draws its conclusions from data collected via English tests available for free over the internet. The report was published for the first time in March, 2011 based on the results of over 2 million test takers. The most recent, fifth edition was released in November, 2015. == Methodology == The EF EPI fifth edition was calculated using test data from 900,000 test takers in 2014...

2

@Gilles Care to explain yourself, young man?

Says the lad.

@Cerberus I don't understand the reference/pun, could you please explain?

9:45 PM

I honestly think France is better than Italy...

@Gilles Oh, I thought you were making a joke there, with the woosh?

The comma Tchrist wanted was the Oxford comma.

But I mistakenly referred to Cambridge.

Hmm... even South Korea is green.

I find that map a bit suspect.

I agree that it seems surprising that Poland comes before Germany and Japan before France.

I have to agree that Turkey is pretty bad, though.

Contrary to what one might expect.

But I would guess that Mexico and Brazil are about equal, and that Portugal is better than Spain. It was much worse 20 years ago.

9:49 PM

Even opera singers in Istanbul didn't speak a word of English.

Sing.

Nor French, nor German, for that matter.

Italian?

I wonder how they can sing.

I don't remember whether I tried Italian.

@tchrist You may want to take a look at the numerical results: Poland scores only slightly higher than Germany, but just enough to get the better colour bin.

9:50 PM

I went to listen to my friend's choir today. For some reason, they sang many Spanish songs, one Old/Middle Spanish.

@Wrzlprmft But even that is suspect...

Of course my experience is limited, but the Germans I know speak much better English than the (educated) Poles.

In Holland, you can ask for directions in English in any village.

Even most old people will be able to understand basic English.

@Cerberus There may be a bias due to the people that you get to know.

Naturally.

My German friends always tell me that the Frenches are better at English than the Germans.

But historically I'd be very surprised too.

West-Germany is much closer to England, and was never locked behind the Iron Curtain.

I think that because ES and PT have both CMs and a native interface on the SO sites, it would be possible to have them have an optional native interface on the SE sites if there were momentum behind that. I don't know how to approach that for the ones with neither CMs nor an existing native interface.

9:54 PM

CM?

@DamkerngT. Not in my general experience.

Cyanogen Mod?

I would guess that Germany hosts a larger variety in English skills than other nations.

Shograts.

@DamkerngT. In my experience, the Germans and a bit better.

9:54 PM

Perhaps it depends.

@Wrzlprmft Quite possibly, between East and West.

Also between educational levels

Why should those matter more in Germany?

@Cerberus Germany traditionally has three school forms with different rank and pupils are selected very early (at an age of 10).

I'm also surprised that Romania and even Ukraine should speak better English than France.

@Wrzlprmft That may make a difference, but pupils are selected at age 12 in Holland.

9:57 PM

You learn English well in the highest school form (Gymnasium) but only rudimentary in the lowest one (Hauptschule).

Another factor may be the availability of translated media.

Don't they learn English mostly from the Internet?

@Wrzlprmft I think that may be important.

We have no dubbing here.

Not really, there is enough German speaking Internet available.

@Cerberus Here = The Netherlands?

There is enough Dutch too, but...

Yes.

There = Germany?

Apparently, yes.

@Cerberus There = the there in there is

Oh, is that where it is.

10:00 PM

As a tendency, I would expect speakers of languages with fewer speakers to be better at English, simpliy because they have more incentive to learn it

Anyway, dubbed movies are a plague in Germany. Even people with good English skills are hardly exposed to movies in English. Everything is dubbed – even porn.

@Wrzlprmft They dub porn!?

Surprised anybody thought the words mattered enough to bother.

Ah, looks like the discussion about which site hosts this room has been had. Did we ping one of the ELL mods?

Oh, who made it? I didn't notice.

So, taking all things together, people from the lower educational levels have little need and incentive to learn English (in fact, learning English alone would significantly boost their educational level).

@tchrist Gilles made it but it is hosted by ELL. Figured we might want it hosted by the Network so it doesn't come up in ELL's sidebar.

10:06 PM

@jimsug This room has already been mentioned in the main ELL room. Not sure if any mod knows.

But you need a mod on the host site to change it.

Gilles must have given it away.

It's hard to ping ELL mods, as you know. Not quite like calling monsters from the vasty deep, but getting there.

Who's the most active ELL mod in chat? Maulik?

...

@tchrist no, I didn't. You have to be a mod on the source site to give a room away.

10:07 PM

@MaulikV Would you mind popping in here and changing the host site of this room to the Stack Exchange Network?

@Gilles I figured you made it on your own and gave it away after that.

@tchrist At least the one that’s on TV and at least about ten years ago when I last had a TV to run into one of these things.

@jimsug Was that a superping? (Just checking)

@Wrzlprmft You can find out by pretending to edit it.

So yes, it was.

very well

J.R. is active when he needs to be.

Just doesn't spend his life in chat is all.

Wendy I don't know all that well.

10:12 PM

Anyway, to go somewhat back to topic: Is there some intelligent way except pinning to save stuff that is interesting for other sites?

@Wrzlprmft For an individual message: starring. For a conversation: bookmarking.

For really useful stuff: meta.

Will starring suffice to collect things for other mods or enthusiasts who will see this room in a few days?

If people don't go crazy at it.

I just remember that we mods can always cancel stars.

Yes, and there are plenty of us here.

10:22 PM

Then let me egoistically remind you that some of you seemed to like this.

@Wrzlprmft and voting on a meta post today will get you a hat

I may not be able to star my own messages, but at least I can unstar them. :)

I think we really should not vote on other community’s decision processes, even if they are completed.

@Wrzlprmft Yes, probably.

@Wrzlprmft Funny.

@Wrzlprmft But pop songs!

And the song from Frozen!

@Cerberus That’s not an incentive. We always joke that Rammstein would never be that popular if people actually understood their lyrics.

10:29 PM

Hah.

I do think it is an incentive, even though one often sings what one does not understand.

Even by listening to it, you will learn something.

Okay, it is an incentive, but not much of it.

sceptical

It's hard to quantify.

@Cerberus Only if your language skills are beyond a certain level.

Even if your level is zero, you will learn something.

Beginning with just the sounds.

You will learn that you do not like opera

10:32 PM

But also the simplest words, ones that become apparent in e.g. a cartoon.

Like "help" or "stop".

Or "penis", if you're thinking of porn.

@Cerberus Sure, but that’s about it. If you lack the context, you can easily stop trying. It’s like reading phonetics. You are exposed to it every day on Wikipedia, but unless you sit down and do some basics, you can easily ignore it without picking anything up.

But learning a language through speech is somewhat different.

Especially for young children listening to someone they adore.

@Cerberus This may suffice, but if you lack context and further stimuli, this does not help you much.

Try learning German from Rammstein lyrics …

Also, I do not dispute that some children may actually get hooked up on English this way, but that’s the exception. The statistical problem from which this discussion branched off is hardly affected by this.

Anyway, I got to go to bed. However, I have some topics in stock for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

10:48 PM

Good night! @Wrzlprmft

Any opinions (and upvotes ;-) are welcome: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/82841/language-learning/…

In the case anyone is interested in the proposal, here it is:

121

Language Learning

Proposed Q&A site for students, teachers, polyglots, and anyone involved in the process of learning or teaching a new spoken or written language.

Currently in definition.

11:23 PM

OMG Irish is messed up!

I'm starting Irish in Duolingo

It's either that they're teaching the analog if 'didja', 'wanna', 'I should of' just to be au courant. Or Irish is really like that.

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