Our Spanish community

Discuss the LLORG's and HTLAL forum's past and its future here.
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sjintje
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby sjintje » Wed Jan 06, 2016 6:18 pm

Sorry to be negative but I think a foreign language only sub forum will struggle to flourish over the long term.

And sorry to be repetitive, but I think it would be much more useful to the community to have instead sub forums devoted to specific languages where everything was gathered together, resources, tipps, general comments and observations, etc, without the obligation always to be written in that language.

Of course, writing in the target language would still be encouraged. Personally, I did start a few threads on the old forum, and it felt like being in a morgue. I would probably do it more often, if there was a bit of ongoing activity. It puts you under a bit of pressure, when yours is the only post for six months and you know everyone will automatically be scrutinising it.
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Spoonary
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby Spoonary » Wed Jan 06, 2016 10:43 pm

arthaey wrote:
aliciaftw wrote:Writing prompts themselves wouldn't be hard to find.

I maintain a writing prompts Twitter list that always has multiple prompts a day. Some are fiction prompts, some are not.

Let's not forget the list of output prompts on the output challenge discussion thread. No, finding prompts is not difficult.

You're right, arthaey, the prompts don't necessarily need to be translated into Spanish. However, if we were to start a weekly/monthly output prompts feature on the Spanish sub-forum, they probably should be, right? That said, arthaey's original thread (and the output discussion thread) are/were aimed at everyone, no matter their target language. I'm not sure how comfortable I am about doing something like this just for those who are studying Spanish, when I know it could help everyone. Is this being counter-productive towards the original purpose of this thread? I don't know any more. :?

@Iguanamon, thank you for leading the pack and starting some threads. I have only had a quick glance at them so far but I'll be hopping over there after having finished this post and offering my two cents :)

@sjintje Your thoughts, whether or not they go against the grain of what the general opinion seems to be, are most welcome. While I agree that it would be great to have a place where all the tips and resources etc. were gathered for each language, that sounds more like a wiki or a normal webpage to me than a forum, which I understand to be a place for communication and the sharing of opinions, rather than a storage system for information.

General thoughts:
What I would like to see is more interaction between members, actually using the language that we all have spent time learning. I understand that the fact that the sub-forum is 'Spanish-only' could put people off who are perhaps not confident about their ability to write/communicate in Spanish, but I would urge them to just give it a go. There is no pressure here to get everything right or risk sticking out like a sore thumb. We're all learners and, as such, are in the same boat (or, given that we are all at different levels, we were in the same boat at one time).
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sjintje
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby sjintje » Fri Jan 08, 2016 10:58 am

Spoonary wrote:
General thoughts:
What I would like to see is more interaction between members, actually using the language that we all have spent time learning.


So you'd like a sub forum where we can write Spanish, and I'd like one where we can post any and everything we like about Spanish. Do you think it would discourage people from posting in Spanish, if there were posts in English? I think it might actually encourage more people to post in Spanish.
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iguanamon
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby iguanamon » Fri Jan 08, 2016 12:13 pm

sjintje wrote:... Do you think it would discourage people from posting in Spanish, if there were posts in English? I think it might actually encourage more people to post in Spanish.

Speaking for myself, yes I do believe it would discourage people from posting in Spanish there. This whole forum's default language is English. We have a space reserved for Spanish only. Why can't we have that. Yes, you're right, sjintje, it will never be as active as the English-only forum is. That doesn't mean that we can't give it a chance to be something useful to the community. This forum is not even six months old yet. Let's give it a chance to grow and see what it can become.

I felt the same way about TAC. The history of TAC on the old forum was great interest in preparing for it, great interest at the first of the year and then gone by mid-February for the most part. The jury is still out on TAC here. I actually believe that this year the mix of participants is a different factor and TAC may surprise me by going past mid-February. You never know. The Spanish sub-forum may surprise us too.

On a side note, sintje, I can't remember your profile from the old forum. It appears you speak Spanish. If you could fill out your profile here it would give us a little more perspective on your posts :). Of course, you don't have to, but it does help.

Edit: I see from your log that you are learning Spanish and Japanese and most likely a native English-speaker.
Last edited by iguanamon on Fri Jan 08, 2016 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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James29
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby James29 » Fri Jan 08, 2016 12:57 pm

I sometimes read the Spanish sub forum, but I don't like to write in Spanish on this site so I often just skip the "Spanish only" area. I would probably be more active and contribute more in it if I could post in English.
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iguanamon
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby iguanamon » Fri Jan 08, 2016 2:31 pm

With all due respect, James29, allowing English into the Spanish only sub-forum would defeat the purpose of it. When the Español sub-forum was created, rdearman posted the following:

rdearman wrote:Welcome to another Highly Experimental section of this board. We want to try and encourage the use of languages other than English to allow people to interact in either their target language, or native language. So as a trial we've decided to open a Spanish Only forum. The rules here are the same as the rest of the forum, with one additional rule. You need to post in Spanish.(Emphasis is mine.)

I admit that at this point in time, there isn't much activity and few to no native-speakers are participating. This may change in the future. Members come and go all the time and hopefully we will get some new native Spanish-speaker members.
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Spoonary
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Re: Our Spanish community

Postby Spoonary » Fri Jan 08, 2016 5:15 pm

As my opinions are pretty much identical to iguanamon's in this case, I don't see that there is anything for me to add here.

Thanks iguanamon!
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