On Wed, May 09, 2001, Ehud Gavron wrote:
"Europeans have this knack..."
OFF-TOPIC and stupid.
Europeans have this knack of taking a perfectly good on-topic operational problem and turning it into a whine about how Americans don't try and speak their N languages.
Referring to me? God, I hate being flamed.
Welcome to the Internet. We speak English. Welcome to telecommunication carriers. We speak English. Welcome to the International Space Station. We speak English. Welcome to maritime SOS. We speak English. Welcome to my backyard.
We speak English. You don't have to like it, but it's not xenophobic, xenocentric, Americentric, Anglocentric, or anything other than REALITY created through EXPEDIENCY.
Thats strange. I see lots of work with the free unices in an attempt to get internationalisation to work. I see lots of commercial software applications and operating systems which have localisation and internationalisation options. And, on mailing lists with a subscriber base that is non technical and non-English-subscriber-limited, I frequently get emails sent by people in some other language[1]. In fact, I could say that a lot of foreign users can get away being on the internet without a decent understanding of English. The internet != telco != ISS != Maritime SOS != any other internationally agreed upon and perhaps regulated area where English has been accepted as being the "language of choice". The internet has no regulations, and as such you must understand that not everyone on the internet - admin or user - is required to speak English. Adding to that, the intelligence level required to pilot an airplane, operate telco infrastructure, fly a spacecraft or sail a boat is _NOT_ being dumbed down so any idiot user that can read can use. Now, if it were me, I'd force any company with an internet connection and a BGP connection to have a NOC/sysadmin(s) capable of speaking a common language. I'd prefer it to be English because I don't speak any other languages (yes, I'm Australian, and as my dutch friends will be quite happy to point out _i do not speak any other languages_) but I'd be happy with some form of standard. The internet has a bunch of technical standards which we loosely agree to. There's no law stating "thou shalt speak English if connected via BGP4 to thy internet". Live with it. Adrian [1] Generally they are french. :-) -- Adrian Chadd "How could we possibly use sex to get <adrian@creative.net.au> what we want? Sex _IS_ what we want!" -- Fraser
On Wed, May 09, 2001, Ehud Gavron wrote: Welcome to the Internet. We speak English. Welcome to telecommunication carriers. We speak English. Welcome to the International Space Station. We speak English. Welcome to maritime SOS. We speak English. Welcome to my backyard.
welcome to the land of bigots. our son brought a bumper sticker back from university of montana "ignorance and pride, the cowboy way" randy
On Wed, May 09, 2001, Ehud Gavron wrote:
Welcome to the Internet. We speak English. Welcome to telecommunication carriers. We speak English. Welcome to the International Space Station. We speak English. Welcome to maritime SOS. We speak English. Welcome to my backyard.
welcome to the land of bigots.
I can only conclude from your input that you believe it is better for everyone to learn several languages to cause international operations to work more soomthly. It is real nice to have a standard language. In many cases (see above) English is the standard. That doesn't make us the land of bigots. I have flown aircraft in 13 countries - It was sure nice (and STANDARD) to be able to (have done it) call Mayday on the guard freg and have soemone understand. By the way, Mayday comes from the French word " m'aides" which means help me. ============================================== Most jet drivers look down their noses at helicopter aviators. That is until they get shot down and need a ride home. This is normally completed in the same spot they got blasted. ==============================================
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 12:26:00AM +0800, Adrian Chadd exclaimed:
The internet has a bunch of technical standards which we loosely agree to. There's no law stating "thou shalt speak English if connected via BGP4 to thy internet".
And are _any_ of those technical standards written in a language other than English? Think about the acronyms we use in network-speak every day - how many of them stand for phrases in a language other than English? I'm not saying that it's good, bad or indifferent that English is the primary language of the Net, but I _am_ saying that we need to be realistic: the Net was created as an American project, by American engineers, on American dollars, and likewise for the protocols and standards that run it. I'm 100% in favor of internationalization, but at a certain level, there must be an agreed-upon standard of communcation - BGP needs to be BGP everywhere in the world, not some other acronym depending on whatever the operator's local language happens to be. Again, I'm not saying that communication shouldn't (or cannot) be attempted or encouraged in a multitutde of local language - I'm just observing that those who try to deny the English basis of the Internet and the protocols that drive it are ignoring its history. -- Scott Francis scott@ [work:] v i r t u a l i s . c o m Systems Analyst darkuncle@ [home:] d a r k u n c l e . n e t West Coast Network Ops GPG keyid 0xCB33CCA7 illum oportet crescere me autem minui
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 11:29:23AM -0700, Scott Francis wrote:
Again, I'm not saying that communication shouldn't (or cannot) be attempted or encouraged in a multitutde of local language - I'm just observing that those who try to deny the English basis of the Internet and the protocols that drive it are ignoring its history.
Ok, they're ignoring it's history. Now what? There are four choices: 1) Try to get China to pass a law requiring it's citizens who administrate Internet systems to learn English. 2) Block all access to your systems from China. 3) Type English at them loudly and slowly. 4) Try to communicate with them in Chinese. Which of these four do you think is most likely to acheive all your goals, I.E., get the problems fixed without removing access to Chinese systems for your users? Or, to put it as my father might: Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which fills up first.
On Wed, 9 May 2001, Shawn McMahon wrote:
There are four choices:
1) Try to get China to pass a law requiring it's citizens who administrate Internet systems to learn English.
2) Block all access to your systems from China.
3) Type English at them loudly and slowly.
4) Try to communicate with them in Chinese.
In fact there is a simple variant of your third option: send clear, coherent messages in standard English. I think that on the whole you will find that it works wonders. There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: Chinese people can't learn English. You are wrong. China's use of the Internet is skyrocketing. People in China understand that the common language of the Internet is English, and they are learning it. In fact if you run down a list of RFCs, you will find that a remarkable number have authors with Chinese names. -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
On Wed, 9 May 2001, Jim Dixon wrote: :China's use of the Internet is skyrocketing. People in China :understand that the common language of the Internet is English, and :they are learning it. Actually, the common language of the Internet these days, is the language of whomever has the largest consumer demand, and the means to pay for your services. Given the trade agreements in the works, I think Babelfish will be bigger than Yahoo in a few years. In the unlikely event people start to see communication as something other than a transaction, we would see some balance in the languages people spoke. Unfortunately, it seems language is also at the ridiculous whims of The Market(tm) too. If you really want to stop the attacks coming in from CN, tell your vendors they have 6 mo's to provide you with a well written and tested product, or you are switching everything over to OpenBSD. ;) -- batz Reluctant Ninja Defective Technologies
Jim Dixon wrote:
There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: Chinese people can't learn English.
Is it "can't" or "don't feel the need to"? I don't think it's "can't." It is horribly USA-centric to expect everyone to speak English, get pissed when they don't, but not at least attempt to speak others' languages.
China's use of the Internet is skyrocketing. People in China understand that the common language of the Internet is English, and they are learning it.
But there is nothing that requires them to learn English. Your attitude, at best, smacks of provincialism.
In fact if you run down a list of RFCs, you will find that a remarkable number have authors with Chinese names.
I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese people who speak fluent English. That doesn't mean they should have to learn English to enjoy the Internet. -- Tired of Earthlink? Get JustTheNet! Nationwide Dialup, ISDN, DSL, ATM, Frame Relay, T-1, T-3, and more. EARTHLINK AMNESTY PROGRAM: Buy a year, get two months free More info coming soon to http://JustThe.net, or e-mail me!
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 06:09:06PM -0400, Steve Sobol wrote:
Jim Dixon wrote:
There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: Chinese people can't learn English.
Is it "can't" or "don't feel the need to"?
I don't think it's "can't."
It is horribly USA-centric to expect everyone to speak English, get pissed when they don't, but not at least attempt to speak others' languages.
I would hardly call this USA-centric, whether or not you agree with the behavior. If some other language were becoming as widely-accepted as English is (and if English weren't), do you think you'd see so many people advocating English as a "common language"? The fact that English happens to be it is incidental. The fact that this particular discussion happens to be about China is incidental. The point is that it makes things much easier on everyone if we can all communicate in the same language, particularly when one language seems to already be emerging as "common". What happens when I need to contact an admin for whose language no web translator exists?
China's use of the Internet is skyrocketing. People in China understand that the common language of the Internet is English, and they are learning it.
But there is nothing that requires them to learn English. Your attitude, at best, smacks of provincialism.
I don't recall anyone saying that anybody was required to learn English. But again, do you object to the concept, or just the fact that it's English?
In fact if you run down a list of RFCs, you will find that a remarkable number have authors with Chinese names.
I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese people who speak fluent English. That doesn't mean they should have to learn English to enjoy the Internet.
Nor should you have to learn how to patch and maintain a webserver to surf the web. But we're not talking about end users, we're talking about admins. Do admins -have- to learn English? No, but I don't think it's an unreasonable request when they will be operating a server in a network where it's the most common language spoken by their fellow admins, particularly when their machine is in a position to pose a security risk to others' machines and networks. But I guess wanting to be able to deal with operational issues in a common language, whether it's English or not, makes me USA-centric... -c
[history on] There was a time when French was considered the language of the "world" and the language of international affairs. [history off] I am sure numerically, Chinese speakers are pretty comparable to English speakers, but the trend (technologically) does favor English IMO. I have never seen a C compiler that used Chinese or French syntax, though you could always make them do I/O in whatever language you want. Microsoft has Windows speaking a number of languages too. Until compilers are written in a non-English syntax and popularized, I suspect computer/data support for English will always be a bit better (and therefore easier to use) than non-English. Yes, it is incidental that it is English, but I, for one, am glad I don't need to do "ecrivez" lines in C with an accent over the e from my keyboard everytime I need to dump debugging output to a screen. [Yes, I am trivializing an issue some feel very strongly about...] Deepak Jain AiNET -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Clayton Fiske Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 1:18 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Common language? [was re: black hat .cn networks] On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 06:09:06PM -0400, Steve Sobol wrote:
Jim Dixon wrote:
There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: Chinese people can't learn English.
Is it "can't" or "don't feel the need to"?
I don't think it's "can't."
It is horribly USA-centric to expect everyone to speak English, get pissed when they don't, but not at least attempt to speak others' languages.
I would hardly call this USA-centric, whether or not you agree with the behavior. If some other language were becoming as widely-accepted as English is (and if English weren't), do you think you'd see so many people advocating English as a "common language"? The fact that English happens to be it is incidental. The fact that this particular discussion happens to be about China is incidental. The point is that it makes things much easier on everyone if we can all communicate in the same language, particularly when one language seems to already be emerging as "common". What happens when I need to contact an admin for whose language no web translator exists?
China's use of the Internet is skyrocketing. People in China understand that the common language of the Internet is English, and they are learning it.
But there is nothing that requires them to learn English. Your attitude, at best, smacks of provincialism.
I don't recall anyone saying that anybody was required to learn English. But again, do you object to the concept, or just the fact that it's English?
In fact if you run down a list of RFCs, you will find that a remarkable number have authors with Chinese names.
I'm sure there are plenty of Chinese people who speak fluent English. That doesn't mean they should have to learn English to enjoy the Internet.
Nor should you have to learn how to patch and maintain a webserver to surf the web. But we're not talking about end users, we're talking about admins. Do admins -have- to learn English? No, but I don't think it's an unreasonable request when they will be operating a server in a network where it's the most common language spoken by their fellow admins, particularly when their machine is in a position to pose a security risk to others' machines and networks. But I guess wanting to be able to deal with operational issues in a common language, whether it's English or not, makes me USA-centric... -c
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 01:41:57AM -0400, Deepak Jain exclaimed:
I am sure numerically, Chinese speakers are pretty comparable to English speakers, but the trend (technologically) does favor English IMO. I have never seen a C compiler that used Chinese or French syntax, though you could always make them do I/O in whatever language you want. Microsoft has Windows speaking a number of languages too. Until compilers are written in a non-English syntax and popularized, I suspect computer/data support for English will always be a bit better (and therefore easier to use) than non-English.
thank you. This was what I was driving at in my original post, but I managed to neglect to include the specifics of that particular point.
Yes, it is incidental that it is English, but I, for one, am glad I don't need to do "ecrivez" lines in C with an accent over the e from my keyboard everytime I need to dump debugging output to a screen.
[Yes, I am trivializing an issue some feel very strongly about...]
it's entirely possible that some are also a bit too sensitive, and rather than wasting time complaining about the current state of affairs, should direct their energy towards changing that state. -- Scott Francis scott@ [work:] v i r t u a l i s . c o m Systems Analyst darkuncle@ [home:] d a r k u n c l e . n e t West Coast Network Ops GPG keyid 0xCB33CCA7 illum oportet crescere me autem minui
On Wed, May 09, 2001, Clayton Fiske wrote:
Nor should you have to learn how to patch and maintain a webserver to surf the web. But we're not talking about end users, we're talking about admins. Do admins -have- to learn English? No, but I don't think it's an unreasonable request when they will be operating a server in a network where it's the most common language spoken by their fellow admins, particularly when their machine is in a position to pose a security risk to others' machines and networks.
"fellow admins" ? What, the admins they: * hang out with in their city? * on irc? * in a newsgroup? * through IM type clients?
But I guess wanting to be able to deal with operational issues in a common language, whether it's English or not, makes me USA-centric...
no, that doesn't make you USA-centric. Wanting people to speak English because its the "standard language" .. what "standard language" ? Wanting people to speak English because the internet and computing in general was invented by Americans - well, guess we're all going to have to speak Chinese since they invented gunpowder. You want a globally-self-regulating internet, yet you want English to be the "standard language" ? A common language for internet operations would be a good thing. Now, how do you encourage people to learn and speak it? As a fun thought experiment - imagine for a moment how you'd feel if you had to learn Chinese (and you obviously didn't speak it!), but you couldn't move to Chinese. Everyone around you still speaks English (so you don't get the practice/exposure needed) but you get net-related emails in Chinese. Some of your software is written in Chinese, but all the modern stuff has an English option. Welcome to planet earth. please enjoy your stay. This is my last post on the topic. Adrian -- Adrian Chadd "How could we possibly use sex to get <adrian@creative.net.au> what we want? Sex _IS_ what we want!" -- Fraser
For whatever it's worth, the official language of aviation worldwide is English. It is a standard and a requirement in towers. Reality is that they most likely speak "aviation English" is remote airports. Just enough so pilots can understand where to put the plane and were not to. So a common language can be chosen. My experience with the issue occured a few years back. Doing some work with a large Columbian conglomerate, they sent over they top admins for a meeting in the US. We had native speakers (from Cuba) who were also 20-25 year UNIX admin veterans. A funny thing happened... they could not speak common Spanish UNIX. Each group had local terms created for items as simply as Email. I found it very interesting that we basically had to go back to describing something like a car as "that thing we sit in with 4 wheels that takes us places...." It was an eye opening experience. I do not believe having internationally recognized words such as Email, File system, Disk are bad. English is a bastard language with lots of foreign words. In Florida most Spanish speakers use SpanGlish which is a combination of Spanish with very useful English words thrown in. It works, and even English only speaks have a good idea of what the conversation is. (Yes, it's always about them!! :-) ) dd At 2:42 PM +0800 5/10/01, Adrian Chadd wrote:
On Wed, May 09, 2001, Clayton Fiske wrote:
Nor should you have to learn how to patch and maintain a webserver to surf the web. But we're not talking about end users, we're talking about admins. Do admins -have- to learn English? No, but I don't think it's an unreasonable request when they will be operating a server in a network where it's the most common language spoken by their fellow admins, particularly when their machine is in a position to pose a security risk to others' machines and networks.
"fellow admins" ? What, the admins they:
* hang out with in their city? * on irc? * in a newsgroup? * through IM type clients?
But I guess wanting to be able to deal with operational issues in a common language, whether it's English or not, makes me USA-centric...
no, that doesn't make you USA-centric. Wanting people to speak English because its the "standard language" .. what "standard language" ? Wanting people to speak English because the internet and computing in general was invented by Americans - well, guess we're all going to have to speak Chinese since they invented gunpowder.
You want a globally-self-regulating internet, yet you want English to be the "standard language" ?
A common language for internet operations would be a good thing. Now, how do you encourage people to learn and speak it?
As a fun thought experiment - imagine for a moment how you'd feel if you had to learn Chinese (and you obviously didn't speak it!), but you couldn't move to Chinese. Everyone around you still speaks English (so you don't get the practice/exposure needed) but you get net-related emails in Chinese. Some of your software is written in Chinese, but all the modern stuff has an English option.
Welcome to planet earth. please enjoy your stay.
This is my last post on the topic.
Adrian
-- Adrian Chadd "How could we possibly use sex to get <adrian@creative.net.au> what we want? Sex _IS_ what we want!" -- Fraser
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 02:42:17PM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
a network where it's the most common language spoken by their fellow admins, particularly when their machine is in a position to pose a security risk to others' machines and networks.
"fellow admins" ? What, the admins they:
* hang out with in their city? * on irc? * in a newsgroup? * through IM type clients?
Are you deliberately avoiding the point? I thought it was fairly clear that "fellow admins" in this case referred to other admins, in other parts of the world in addition to their own.
Wanting people to speak English because the internet and computing in general was invented by Americans - well, guess we're all going to have to speak Chinese since they invented gunpowder.
And here you go again arguing a non-point. I specifically stated that it didn't matter whether it was English or not. I never mentioned Americans having anything to do with my argument. If the Internet had been created in Germany and, as it grew around the world, German became the language most used to communicate about operational issues, as an admin I would be happy to learn German. It would make my life that much easier (and that of those with whom I needed to interact).
You want a globally-self-regulating internet, yet you want English to be the "standard language" ?
Ignoring that I never shared my feelings on a globally-self-regulating Internet, I don't see how these two are contradictory anyway. A standard doesn't -have- to be adhered to, it just makes things difficult when it's not. You can make TCP behave any way you like on your machine. You just won't be able to talk to too many other machines with it if you do. And, once again, I don't care if it's English or not. I just think it would be good to have a standard.
A common language for internet operations would be a good thing. Now, how do you encourage people to learn and speak it?
What more encouragement is necessary? If I become part of a large community which, for the most part, communicates in a common way, that fact by itself will certainly encourage me to learn it. Why would I want to potentially exclude myself by not doing so?
As a fun thought experiment - imagine for a moment how you'd feel if you had to learn Chinese (and you obviously didn't speak it!), but you couldn't move to Chinese. Everyone around you still speaks English (so you don't get the practice/exposure needed) but you get net-related emails in Chinese. Some of your software is written in Chinese, but all the modern stuff has an English option.
Well, as above, if there were some motivating factor encouraging me to do so, I would feel fine. Are you suggesting that Chinese could become a "common language" on the Internet? How China-centric of you.
This is my last post on the topic.
Mine as well. -c
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 09:28:18PM +0100, Jim Dixon wrote:
In fact there is a simple variant of your third option: send clear, coherent messages in standard English. I think that on the whole you will find that it works wonders.
Sometimes, yes. We have numerous stories here from people who say it's not working for them.
There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: Chinese people can't learn English.
You are wrong.
There's a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here; that I think Chinese people can't learn English. You are wrong. Some of my favorite co-workers are Chinese, and speak English more than well enough to deal with any request we're likely to make of them. I deal with native speakers of various Chinese dialects every time I order an airsoft from a Hong Kong dealer. I would have to be delusional to think it was impossible for Chinese people to learn English. It is also possible for you to learn Chinese. Just because a thing is possible does not mean 6 billion people will do that thing.
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 08:28:13PM -0400, Shawn McMahon scribbled: | On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 09:28:18PM +0100, Jim Dixon wrote: | > In fact there is a simple variant of your third option: send clear, | > coherent messages in standard English. I think that on the whole | > you will find that it works wonders. | | Sometimes, yes. We have numerous stories here from people who say it's | not working for them. Send clear, simple, coherent messages. Use short sentences and do not use fancy grammar like multiple nested clauses. Remember, the other end needs to be able to parse the information. :) | > There is a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here: | > Chinese people can't learn English. | > | > You are wrong. | | There's a strange assumption underlying what you are saying here; that I | think Chinese people can't learn English. | | You are wrong. Some of my favorite co-workers are Chinese, and speak | English more than well enough to deal with any request we're likely to | make of them. As someone else mentioned on the list, most of the people in the world learn English when they receive an education. (Not even higher education, just middle and high school) Whether they can speak English well is not an issue, because there is bound to be someone in their office who speaks English well. In fact, one of my former female friends, who was a US diplomat's daughter in Taiwan, and who never spoke a word of Chinese at all, was able to communicate with the 7-11 and supermarket clerks in Taiwan without difficulty. That said, whoever wanted to block *.cn at IX's must have been one ignorant admin. If anything, there are more crackers and script kiddies in the US than anywhere else in the world. According to his idiotic logic, shall we block *.{com,net,gov,mil,edu,org,us}? | I deal with native speakers of various Chinese dialects every time I order | an airsoft from a Hong Kong dealer. I would have to be delusional to | think it was impossible for Chinese people to learn English. | | It is also possible for you to learn Chinese. Just because a thing is | possible does not mean 6 billion people will do that thing. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | keichii@iteration.net | keichii@freebsd.org | | http://iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 11:29:23AM -0700, Scott Francis wrote:
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 12:26:00AM +0800, Adrian Chadd exclaimed:
The internet has a bunch of technical standards which we loosely agree to. There's no law stating "thou shalt speak English if connected via BGP4 to thy internet".
And are _any_ of those technical standards written in a language other than English? Think about the acronyms we use in network-speak every day - how many of them stand for phrases in a language other than English?
Acronyms can be translated too. The termination point for my Bell Canada ADSL service is labelled "ADSL/LNPA", for example. I think what you meant to say was: "the English Acronyms I use when speaking English only make sense in English!" :) Joe
participants (13)
-
Adrian Chadd -
batz -
Clayton Fiske -
David Diaz -
Deepak Jain -
dklindt＠ordata.com -
Jim Dixon -
Joe Abley -
Michael C . Wu -
Randy Bush -
Scott Francis -
Shawn McMahon -
Steve Sobol