Life In 19x19

tapir wrote:SL is mostly (99.7%) written in English but perfectly open to other languages

My point wasn't that we shouldn't be open to other languages. Just that, if you want to learn go or teach go, your most efficient options are to learn an Asian language or learn English.

tapir wrote:KGS is completely multilingual

Right now, the EGR has about 10 games open and about 120 active; the 日本の碁会所 has 5 open and about 30 active; the Salle Française has 1 open and 9 active; the Deutsche Ecke has 0 open and 4 active. These are, in my experience, the four biggest national rooms on KGS (by number of users). (The current number of games may be a time zone issue biased in America's favour, but I don't think you'll find any time when the numbers aren't similar. I've noticed the Deutsche Ecke go up to 20-30 games before, but rarely more.) KGS is multilingual in the same way SL is; it's open to other languages, but in practice, most stuff is done in English.

tapir wrote:if you want to spread Go to elderly people or kids you can't rely on a foreign language

I agree completely. That doesn't seem to be what you were talking about in your first post, though!

tapir wrote:Esperanto. It is somewhat like Go, five minutes to get started, but a lifetime to master.

And no sense of satisfaction a few months in when you realise you still can't talk to anyone in it.

billywoods wrote:

tapir wrote:if you want to spread Go to elderly people or kids you can't rely on a foreign language

I agree completely. That doesn't seem to be what you were talking about in your first post, though!

I didn't realize what motivated Tapir early on, but it's entirely consistent. The point is that there's back and forth between high level discussion of the game and having a comfortable vocabulary for introducing the game to beginners, kids, elderly players, and so on. Maybe you don't directly use the same concepts, principles, and what have you, but having spent time discussing those high level concepts in your native language will help you be more effective in communicating later on. Terms like "funny business" crop up in fairly high level discussions of terminology, after all.

It is interesting that the first western dan player was from Austria:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Wimmer

hyperpape wrote:

billywoods wrote:

tapir wrote:if you want to spread Go to elderly people or kids you can't rely on a foreign language

I agree completely. That doesn't seem to be what you were talking about in your first post, though!

I didn't realize what motivated Tapir early on, but it's entirely consistent. The point is that there's back and forth between high level discussion of the game and having a comfortable vocabulary for introducing the game to beginners, kids, elderly players, and so on. Maybe you don't directly use the same concepts, principles, and what have you, but having spent time discussing those high level concepts in your native language will help you be more effective in communicating later on. Terms like "funny business" crop up in fairly high level discussions of terminology, after all.

Sure. Well, at least in the case of teaching children and so on, I entirely agree with tapir. It's always going to be easier to communicate fuzzy, hand-wavey, intangible concepts like 'influence' and 'thickness' via imprecise language, and that is always best done with a language the student is very comfortable with.

To non-beginner adults with a rudimentary knowledge of English, though, I disagree. I speak from admittedly non-go-related experience: it's uncomfortable to have to read jargon in a language you're not familiar with, but sentence patterns and words crop up over and over again, and you get used to it very quickly provided it's not written in too florid a way. It might as well be a simple code, or your own language with a bunch of new words. Your native language is obviously hugely preferable, but it's not actually significantly more efficient, and I think the benefits of having a common language outweigh the drawbacks.

(Ultimately, after about 10 kyu, most communication can be done silently with stones and a board, pointing, and facial expressions. It is never ideal, but it's always good enough.)

It's also worth pointing out that you, tapir, seem to be envisioning some sort of substitution between time spent preparing English language material on SL and time spent preparing identical German language material for Bavarian octogenarians and Saxon second-graders. In fact, these are quite different projects. SL is a great tool for somewhat intelligent introverts with an autodidactic streak and an obsession with glowing screens. It will never be a platform for early-childhood education, in any language.

Often what we enjoy doing is not what needs to be done most urgently, but there is no shame in that. It would be sad if you stopped working on go projects because the SL articles which call to you seem less important than a preschool intervention which leaves you cold. Personally, I feel compelled to offer really long reviews to anyone who asks. This is undoubtedly the least efficient way of spreading go-knowledge. Nonetheless, I'd like to think its something, and I know that when I offer fewer reviews I don't make up for it by volunteering at elementary schools.

(as for world peace - I was mostly joking. But some people seem to be suggesting that there's something vaguely menacing or discomforting about the role of English in the go community, despite the fact that international communities - with all that they've accomplished, for good or I'll - have always settled on one language or another. It's also worth remembering that a lot of funding for the go community has come from people who see go as a route to international comity and understanding.)

SmoothOper wrote:In theory, if you learned another language you would have less strife in your life, since you would be able to speak and understand others, but your conclusion is that others must speak English, which leads us to conclude that you are the cause of War.

I speak four languages and have never lived in an English speaking country.

Please explain to me how exactly am I the cause of war for suggesting that if everyone spoke the same language the world would be a better place.