[Mageia-discuss] IRC community channels - need a ruling from the board

[Richard]

On Tuesday 05 October 2010 03:36:42 Hoyt Duff wrote:
> As a US Enlgish speaker, I also wrote for the UK-based 
> Linux Format magazine. There are differences in US and UK English, but
> none so severe that meaning is lost. Many idioms are shared or at
> least understandable.
With you so far
>
> I appreciate the efforts of non-native English speakers to converse in
> English, and even in those instances where they are speaking only a
> bare approximation of English, I am still able to understand them.
I will forego the temptation here to make a joke at your expense:-)
>
> I see no need for a GB-only enclave and believe it would only serve to
> isolate them from the larger community. OTOH, where a Linux-oriented
> community exists where many do not speake English in any manner, a
> local-language forun serves to include them in the larger community
> where the lingua-franca is English.
I doubt if many non-native speakers of English (any variety) would be 
sensitive to the nuances of meaning in "GB-only enclave". It could even be 
that the phrase is completely neutral in US English. I hope so, because then 
I can ignore the imagined barb. 

But I think it is worth pointing out that there is a world of difference 
between "GB English" and "en_GB". One of them can, if required, carry 
political overtones; the other cannot. That is the one I am intersted in. 

If the only consideration for the Mageia community is communication then I 
will stand beside you and support everything you have said about the 
usefulness of International English as a medium for sharing thoughts and 
ideas about the distribution and its contents. But stop for a moment and 
consider if this rationale can also be applied to the results of our 
deliberations; the Mageia distribution and its applications.

This is something much more personal as it affects our daily interaction with 
our computers and programs. That is why we have en_US and en_GB, en_IE, en_AU 
and all of the other variants. It is not just to accommodate date displays, 
though that is important enough, nor just to handle measurement units. It 
allows us to select the correct dictionaries to check spelling and provides a 
framework in which to make our programs fit better with our cultuural 
identities. 

So do I think it is wrong to have a place to hang out with "people like me"? 
Of course not. Where else would I go to sound out opinion or exchange views 
on such culturally important computer developments as cricket scorecard data 
capture and display programs?

Richard