In which threads can I post in a non-english language?

[tomgosse]

One thing that I would like to see added to the FAQ is an explanation about which forums/threads can I post in a non-English language? Twice I have been politely advised that I should not have posted in French, but in English.

Thank you,
Tom

[emk]

One thing that I would like to see added to the FAQ is an explanation about which forums/threads can I post in a non-English language? Twice I have been politely advised that I should not have posted in French, but in English.

On the old forum, the administrator asked people to use English everywhere but in the language-specific forums and the multi-lingual lounge. This was later extended to include logs.

In general, the rules on the new forum are the same as the rules on the old forum. But in this particular case, I'm not aware of any particular consensus among the moderators about how that rule should apply on the new forum (which has different sections), or whether we should keep it. We do have a few language-related policies that I'm aware of: The Spanish subforum strongly encourages the use of Spanish everywhere, for example. And obviously, if you're engaging in a pre-existing English-language discussion in one of the general forums, it would be fairly weird to suddenly switch to language that not everybody speaks. Also, if moderators suspect that somebody is using another language to hide disruptive behavior, we will either translate it ourselves or try to find somebody who can.

I'll check with the other moderators to find out if we've been accidentally working at cross-purposes without knowing it. It happens sometimes.

[Arnaud]

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[Voxel]

It's the right time to ask for the opening of a french subforum

This is inevitable, the study group for French language became the biggest group in the forum.

[rdearman]

I like the idea of a French only sub-forum and I'm willing to put it forward to moderators, but please understand that part of the reason for the success of the Spanish sub-forum is we have a core group of users who work hard to keep interest up, to post interesting questions and topics and to participate fully. While they aren't moderators, they are certainly the curators of the area and drive interesting content. Although now it appears to me anyway to have become self-sustaining.

While I agree there is a lot of French interest is there sufficient numbers of core French speakers and learners willing to generate enough content to make a French sub-forum thrive? On the old HTLAL the other language sub-forums withered away and were basically empty the majority of the time. The Spanish sub-forum is technically still an experiment, all be it a fairly successful one.

I think for a successful French sub-forum, you're going to need at least 2-3 core C1/Natives as well as the regular learners. You need people who are forum regulars who'd like to post in French daily or at least semi-regularly.

[Expugnator]

Count me in as a core C1 poster (unless Arnaud says otherwise, but I'd still be willing to post anyway). I see the Spanish forum (and the reading club) helped bring people together. I read it everyday and I only avoid posting because Spanish isn't an active language of mine. Sometimes I have questions/discussion topics/opinions about learning French that would require a topic on its own and I would feel even more motivated if I could ask them in French.

[Arnaud]

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[tastyonions]

I would love a French-only subforum and would write in it at least a few times a week.

[Iversen]

As rdearman observes the language specific subforums at HTLAL withered away because nobody wrote in them - except an occasional lone and desperate cry in the wilderness to complain about the lack of activity. Right now the Spanish subforum here seems to be fairly active, but there are also a couple of 'loose' language specific threads that show signs of becoming inactive. Basically you need a group of maybe half a dozen regular participants to keep a thread within the first couple of pages of the 'active topics' - otherwise it will become invisible to the majority of users here. I'm fairly convinced that there are people enough to do the trick for French so I would advocate making the experiment. But it would present a structural problem if we end up with t ten totally inactive subforums on the board list where the original core group has evaporated after the first bout of enthousiasm.

Personally I haven't written much in the language specific threads or subfora at HTLAL, mostly others didn't write anything, but also because I had the alternative to write in my own log thread in whatever language I fancied - and there I could even choose my subjects instead of waiting for something to turn up in a language specific thread. And I don't have to keep on harping on some specific subject there - I can write about Spanish organs one day and about Majorana particles the next without having to ask myself whether this or that subject could lead to a long and fruitful discussion among a number of forum members. Actually I doubt that the majority of the subjects which I write about in my log thread would be suitable as the starting point for long and lively discussion in a language specific subforum (hehe). But writing about such subjects is an important part of my personal language learning (obs: those you see on screen are only the tip of the iceberg), and everybody is of course welcome to comment in whatever language they fancy (as long as either I or Google translate can understand it).

Let me finish off with a bit of historical information. When the multilingual subfora were introduced at HTLAL long ago I was originally quite enthousiastic about it. But I soon realized that the discussions there more looked liked frantic attempts to write something while all the interesting discussions were happening in the English parts of the forum. And I became frustrated with waiting for something relevant to pop up, while my own ideas for topics objectively weren't suitable for discussions among a large number of forum members. And then I decided to make my log thread multilingual. Until then log threads had been defined as places where you described your concrete study activities (somewhat like to role of the TAC logs today), but with the consent of FX I changed my log into a multilingual bloglike thing - others soon did the same which showed that they had the same problem with the language specific threads as I had. In the beginning I added English translations to my non-English rants, but that became boring, and then I went for free parallel texts, and now I basically just try to keep the log as varied as possible without to deliver all information in other languages in English too.

The solution with added translations could in theory function for non-English contributions to English threads in general, but in practice it would be boring to write (and read!) the same thing in two languages so I don't see it as a viable option - except maybe for quotes, where it often would be nice to be able to see the original formulation in the original language.

[tomgosse]

Tangleweeds suggested starting a French thread in the Multilingual room. Personally, I like this idea. This is what the multilingual room is for, and if a thread or threads take off we can ask the moderators to move them to a new French specific forum. If no one starts it by the end of the day, I will.