Would it be rude?

To have a spanish-language thread on this site? Or any other language? ...just a thought....

Love, Lavanda

There has never been the need for a non-English thread, as there has never been a concentration of folks with other tongues here. Whenever non-english tongues are present, there are typically two people, who can easily carry their conversation on in private E-mail.

If we had 3 or more native spanish speakers, I would setup a gardening forum specifically for their use, I think.

Dave

That's a tough one. If someone finds Dave's and is able to read it, why would they need to have a language-exclusive forum? It would be easy for such a forum to become very cliquish and exclude others from sharing ideas.

English is pretty much the standard language of commerce world-wide and as such it makes sense for that to be the primary language spoken here, IMHO. There's so many languages represented here by membership, it could really mushroom and end up being divisive; I could see people who only speak English as a second language might not even try to communicate in the English-speaking forums.

Yes, gardenwife, this is an opinion I have heard befre. Thus the question.

However, I know of several people who are members, paid or unpaid whom I have already conversed with off-site. Some can read English but not necessarily communicate in it.

Dave I can name several right this moment: myself, and will provide other names to you off-thread or on as you wish.

When I look at the memberships by country, and see how many do not post anywhere at all on Dave's it makes me wonder if
they might not be more comfortable in another language.

IMHO, diversity is beautiful.

Love Lavanda

I guess I don't think about it so much because I'm in the midwest and surrounded largely by people who speak English as their first language. I didn't think about how some can read another language, but not write or speak it necessarily. I don't speak any second language, so I'm really at a disadvantage in that! It's a good think I know English well, or I'd be sunk! :)

Ha, I know four subscribed members who can speak Swedish here ;)

I have to agree with Gardenwife.There is so much information and knowledge shared by all countries here that it would be a shame to have that knowledge put in little groups where only the few members in that group would benefit from that knowledge. I don't remember ever seeing a communication problem on DG. We have some German members in the Brug forum and we have much fun learning each others language.Tell your friends to post away Lavanda. It could turn into a fun learning experience for both sides.

This has me thinking...In truth, having penpals and participating in forums is an excellent way to learn English, which will always be helpful to a person. I once had a Chinese penpal who specifically asked for penpals so she could learn to write better.

Lavanda,

Estoy en Texas, 60 millas de la frontera mejicana. Así pues, servir a mis amigos de habla hispana es algo que me placería hacer. :)

Find 3 others to post IN THIS THREAD that they support the idea, have them post their request in Spanish. If this is done, the forum I will create.

Dave

La idea buena. ;)

This message was edited Monday, Mar 31st 6:21 PM

LUH (ler ut høgt), Evert:)

Sounds like a good idea. I don't think it would become cliquish, as the participating members would no doubt wish to contribute to the other forums as well.

Ok, I appreciate this so much Dave, it may work or may not work.

I HATE divisiveness, which is partly why I screwed up my courage to even ASK.

I will do my best to help out by translating when requested or needed. The Lord has kept me alive to serve, and one way I have been called to do that is to serve others by facilitating conversations and sharing.

I am a linguist/translator/interpreter by profession. (speak four languages if you dont include Texan) ;-))Its a funny g

Who knows, we might just ALL learn something, and you each may make new friends you would never have made!

Gracias, querido Dave !

Hola soy Oscy vivo en baja california sur y tambien me interesa comunicarme con otra gente de mexico o america latina sobre las plantas locales o endemicas a su region. Mucha de esa gente tal ves puede leer el ingles pero, pienso que hay alguna gente que serian mas comodos comunicandose en su lengua nativa. Yo estoy interesado en las palmas, cycadas, sabilas, agaves, plantas medicinales y plantas para usos permaculturista. Gracias por su tiempo y espero comunicarme con mas gente latina. If anyone feels that they are being excluded I would be hapyy to try and translate some of the threads (only if REALLY needed). Thanks oscy

Hello I am alive Oscy in South Baja California and also it interests to me to communicate with another people of mexico or Latin america to me on the local or endemicas plants to its region. Much of that people so you see can read ingles but, I think that there is some people that serian but coways communicating in their native language. I am interested in the palms, cycadas, sabilas, medicinal agaves, plants and plants for uses permaculturista. Thanks for its time and I hope to communicate with but Latin people

It is not hard to do!

takes a few minutes and a little of the brain to get the meaning,but I agree that there are gardens I would like to see post,Lavanda could help with some of the words that don't translate out.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr
Nice to meet you!


This message was edited Monday, Mar 31st 11:02 AM

Hey who knows? Mebbe one of these days we can take a field trip to Mexico/South America ? Or a plant expedition to Spain or the Phillippines!

Oscy, recepción a Daves, estoy buscando las pimientas calientes del savino rojo, yo quisiera saber si usted puede encontrar them?you puede enviarme un email personal chascando en mi nombre.
Bob

Perhaps this would be a good forum for Photos to be used? Could be helpful to determine quickly whether a thread would be interesting to someone.

GOOD JOB ROOT!

I grew up in New York City surrounded by people speaking numerous languages..., Russian, Italian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Yiddish, German, Chinese..., ahh, wait, I forgot GAELIC!

Today, my next door neighbors are Korean; the grandparents and I communicate mostly with smiles, bows, nods and hand gestures. A few days ago the elderly woman (who knows my wife is travelling), appeared unannounced at my door at nearly suppertime with a large steaming bowl of noodles in a savory broth. Looking around for something to exchange, I gave her an amaryllis bulb ready for potting.

I've had the chance to visit some countries where my language skills were either primitive or inadequate. The kindness of strangers has always made me feel welcome.

I have no problem with the idea of language diversity, and, personally, because of my life experience, don't necessarily feel left out if a discussion is in progress that I might not fully understand.

At the end of the day, this is one of the many issues on which Dave will make a decision based on his notion of how to shape and grow this community. I have no doubt he'll make decision that conforms best to his vision.

Adam.

What a lively topic and interesting discussion! I thank all of you for taking the time to parse this subject.

I've had some discussion with the other administrators of DG. Serving our friends of Spanish tongue would be an outstanding thing for DG, and I'd love to do it. I feel that DG truly is a global community, as we have representatives from a diverse group. (Consider our Finnish, Chinese, Indian, Arab, and Chilean friends, to only scratch the surface).

In the end, however, I must rescind my original offer of a forum, for the simple reason that we cannot administer it with the same attention and care that we administer the rest of the site.

DG is what it is because of two main factors:

1. The members who make this community.

2. The careful attention that Vols, Trish, and I put into the site, trying to ensure that all members are treated respectfully and that the overall vision of this site is not being diluted by offtopic discussions.

A forum for non-English speakers would make item #2 an impossibility, and for that reason alone, I can't let it come to pass on this site.

I do apologize for getting anyone's hopes up. I definitely spoke (typed) out of turn, and without thinking it through all the way to the end.

Spanish speakers will continue to be welcome here at this site, but we just don't have the facilities to support non-english discussions at this time.

Dave

Good point Dave,did not think of it this way.

Oh, yes. Something like that would have to be a moderated forum overseen by a Spanish-speaking individual. Good point!

I certainly appreciate the consideration here, and mebbe this is somethng that cculd happen in the future!

Hope springs eternal!

Love, Lavanda

What a shame I did not see this thread before.

I would love to have the spanish speaking forum available. I beleive that spanish is becoming a second language in many states in USA and I feel it would have enriched DG's to be this kind of a visionary innovator.

Even when my mother language is spanish, I feel more at home with English, but I feel that the musical nuances of the spanish language in a forum would have provide diversity and widen up some points of views....

I'm going to tell you a little story.

I have 2 boys and they were born in Australia . I'm not the typical migrant, I did not emigrate because of financial reason, I did it because I did marry a man my father did not approve.

I did learn the language the hard way, over there and at that time Australia was, even legally ( it had a government policy: the white australia policy), very racist. I'm white, well, not fair and blue eyes, but aussie inmigration
decreed that I was caucasian (european roots).

My children grew up in that enviroment, I think it was very difficult for them. The only thing they did want was to belong and in that line, when my eldest was about 12 ask me not to speak any more spanish to them. I did feel terrible but I did not argue and we (my hubby and I), spoke only english when communicating with them.

I did want them to have their life enriched with both languages; I started getting videos with movies that has some spanish phrases on them; I'm not one for western but the Mexican amigo and Texas movies came to the rescue .

Every time the amigo spoke spanish my boys did want to know what they were saying, the reply was that I could not explain it because they did not want to speak spanish.....soon it was clear to them that it was better to learn the language well and to try to practice it. Now they speak 4.

Having fear of the unknown, fear of change is a negative attitude, is what caused the McCarthy hearings and all the race problems that our world has had and will have.

I know that a spanish forum will bring more spanish speakers to the site, so:

Lavanda I'm sorry I came here too late. I'm running very short of time lately.

And Dave I pray that you have more strengh in your conviction. Dave's Garden is a gardeners paradise and if you believe in your second point, well I guess you're very mistaken , I don't think Spanish speaking people will be passing top secret messages to each other, planning the overthrow of some government or arranging the next drug shipment. There are other methods for this , the forum would only be used for the purpose it is designed for , GARDENING!.

And since Dave speaks Spanish pretty good for a GRINGO you won't have a problem .........so the arguement is a very weak one.

If people feel so scared and intimidated of what non english speakers say then do what I and millions of others have done including the President of the USA, Mr.Bush , learn another language , in this case Spanish .

That's my 2 bobs worth! [Aussie Slang] {Aussie English}
Aqui van mis 2 pesos Chilenos!

The idea that someone fluent in Spanish would be needed to Moderate the proposed new forum did occur to me, but from Dave's posting en Espanol, I thought it might be he.

cristina, I have seen over the time I have been a member here how certain subjects and topics have led to some unpleasantness on the forums. Some have arisen innocently enough, yet touched off some people's sensibilities. If such a thing were to happen on the Spanish Forum, it could perhaps go on for too long before it was caught. I think it is sensible of Dave to wish to retain control of his website, whether directly, or by trusted administrators.

Too bad, though, I think it could have taken the site into a whole new international dimension. Maybe at some future date Dave will add a bilingual moderator...

Best wishes!

John

Oh, John, don't take me wrong.

I think Dave is just a terrific guy ( I'm not saying this only because he is the owner and the Boss) and as I already stated this is a gardeners paradise, we would not like it to become a circus.

I can see the need for moderation too.

And wether a kind of forum like this is ever going to open and in the suposition that it would, following the same hypothetical line , I would be the first one to go and wisper into Dave's ears that a problem is begining to generate.

John, in any case, it has been good to hear the different opinions and, who knows what may happen in the future.

Good wishes and happy gardening

Cristina

I'm just wondering why there is an anticipated problem with Spanish speaking members before a forum is even established??? This could be a great learning experience for everyone on both sides of the gardening and language fence who are willing to learn.

I think that Cristina's story is a wonderful one, beautifully told. It reminds me a little of friends of ours from Coihaique in Chilean Patagonia. They have two beautiful children and also spent some years in Australia, where all learned fluent English. Their children are now multi~lingual, as well.

If we look at Dave's rationale for not having purely Spanish language threads at this time, and then think about how frequently Dave, Trish and Terry post on DG, and of all the invisible "back office" work it must take to keep the system running, the database clean, produce the overnight newsletter, scan the site for un~wished~for material, etc., etc., etc., the never~ending tweek~tweek~tweek, then we might better gasp his logic.

What Dave has essentially said is that, were Spanish~only threads to commence, the personnel are not available to ensure that those DG members would receive the same level of attention and service that we are now used to. Essentially, he is saying that DG's Spanish speakers would be an underserved population.

Like any well run business, the actual mechanics of this extra~ordinary corner of the web are, for the most part, invisible to the users. And, as in all businesses, to create this ease of use, a lot of hard labor is required behind the scenes.

It's a lot of work for three people.

Let's also not forget that Dave's Garden is, for all intents and purposes free, the pro~rated cost of partcipation coming in at about $0.04 per~day (if memory serves). To expand sevices always means to expand costs.

From my first post in this thread, all know where I stand about multiple languages spoken in any environment: my own life has been enriched by the experience.

I hope Dave will forgive me for clumsily restating his "parsing" of this topic.

And, by the way, if you ever can, please visit Chile. The lanscape, the seascape, and most especially the people, will leave you with memories that will last a lifetime.

Adam.

Sigh, if only I could spell!

This message was edited Tuesday, Apr 1st 7:23 PM

Carol, to specifically address your question, and hopefully clarify: I wouldn't expect or anticipate to have any more - or fewer - problems in a foreign-language forum than we experience throughout the rest of the Dave's Garden forums. Problems do happen, as we've seen many times over.

As Adam surmised, the concern that I (personally) have with a foreign-language forum is that without a moderator who is fluent in the language being spoken, those "early warning signals" of a flare-up (between members, or with one member who gets riled up) would go unheeded until a messy, hurtful outburst occurred. I stress fluency because sometimes it's the subtle phrasing and words chosen that can serve as a cue, so simply running a post through a translator wouldn't help to spot the undercurrents that we should be paying attention to.

Such a forum would suffer from "benign neglect" because we wouldn't be able to interact and moderate in the way we do the rest of the DG forums.

I have tried to be on my best behavior and not say anything, BUT....perhaps among our wonderful members we already have someone willing and qualified to do this?

I do apologize for getting anyone's hopes up. I definitely spoke (typed) out of turn, and without thinking it through all the way to the end.

Spanish speakers will continue to be welcome here at this site, but we just don't have the facilities to support non-english discussions at this time.

Dave

I thought about waiting to put an opinion here until I could think it through. I decided I would answer now and hope not to offend because I haven't been able to visit often lately. So...here it goes...

Dave's Garden is based in the US. We are a primarily english speaking community. Dave's Garden doesn't discriminate, it welcomes a diverse and world-wide community. I enjoy the interaction of my worldly neighbors. I've learned much!

If a post is in a language I don't understand I will skim it unless there is a translation included. I usually go back through it after translation to see if there are words I understand so I can learn them. This will not teach me the language, only terms that are relavent to the conversation. (to say nothing of the differences that vary from dialect to dialect).

Like GW said above:
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"If someone finds Dave's and is able to read it, why would they need to have a language-exclusive forum? It would be easy for such a forum to become very cliquish and exclude others from sharing ideas.

English is pretty much the standard language of commerce world-wide and as such it makes sense for that to be the primary language spoken here, IMHO. There's so many languages represented here by membership, it could really mushroom and end up being divisive; I could see people who only speak English as a second language might not even try to communicate in the English-speaking forums."
********************************************

Funny that today's Voting Booth question asks whether we use botanical names or common names! We can't even agree on botanical names all the time!

Just My Opinion, Never To Offend;
shuttlebunny
Sue

I thought about it a lot, too. I concluded it needs to stay like it is. When I go to a site based in France, I can't expect them to translate it for me, and they don't. The nature of the web is that it is global. There are far too many languages in the world to expect Dave's Garden to provide for everyone who might come here. Kimberley is right, if they can get here, they can understand enough to communicate with at least some success.

Many of the European websites do give the option of choosing a language; however, that would be quite impractical on a site with so many forums and threads.