> Nothing wrong with that at all -- however, English is so easy to learn that > in the last > 200 years it pushed out French and became lingua franca. English isn't lingua franca in switzerland - not yet. Let's have a look at this Publication (sorry, completely written in german) But it's a study about the english language-usage in switzerland. http://www.sbf.admin.ch/htm/dokumentation/publikationen/Bildung/english-d.pdf
Perhaps i should clarify why i am against english for communication in switzerland (yet) to evangelize OpenSource and sharing Knowledge. I agree with all of you thinking about english as lingua franca - but.... On academic level it's more and more common to speak english and therefore they have access to Knowledge/Technology where others have not. But what's below this academic level? Think of the following citation: "To whom much has been given, much will be expected" or "With great power comes great responsibility". And Knowledge is indeed the greatest power of all! >Or could it be that it is the only way to INCLUDE the largest numbers and >EXCLUDE the fewest ? With reaching the largest numbers i mean reaching the largest numbers over all social classes. Not just the one with excellent english knowledge, usually with academic education. Don't overlook older people or people with little money forced to work than going to school/university. OpenSource or OpenSolaris, to stay just a little on the right subject for this mailing-list, is a great chance for just this kind of social class. >> You want to call it SWISS - make it in a way that INCLUDES all the 3 >> national language group of the country of which you are using the name for >> the conference, not EXCLUDE two of them. I already agreed with you on this topic. Therefore i asked you: "Why don't you ask for conferences in french?" The fact here is, that OpenExpo is a local Event located in Berne (german-speaking). It want's to reach the SME's (small medium sized enterprises) and not the rich, large global players with enterprise language 'english'. This SME's has a localized Allday-language of german/french/italian. So if you wants to reach them, you have to speak their language! >> source code was commented in hindi / swedish / arabic / turkish / >> swiss-german and documentations released only in the locale of the >> developer, do you think we would have open-source - open-anything ? There are three kind of universal language: mathematic, physic and the programming language... the source and not the comment has to be open and free to use. >> "And if you're an immigrant go and learn OUR culture/language and don't try >> to force the swiss to become an enclave of your country" Just to make clear what i think was lost in translation. (yes my english isn't as good as i wish it to be) There are a lot of people immigrate to a country and don't speak the native language after years! This is only possible if they cut themselves off or build their 'enclave' in residential quarters where they don't need to get in contact with native people. The worst example where i can think of is probably 'Malorca', where germans are offender and not victims. To make sure, I am not against foreign customs but i expect the same from immigrants. They once decided to emigrate to a country to enjoy their culture(s) and speak their native language(s). But all in all I am not happy with this provocative and too vague statement, therefore i apologize myself for this defective utterance. One reason more why I don't like to write/speak in a foreign language. Kind regards G?rald -------------- n?chster Teil -------------- Ein Dateianhang mit HTML-Daten wurde abgetrennt... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/ug-chosug/attachments/20100304/cb77640c/attachment.html>
