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How come Hindi is not one of the languages one can add sentences for?
you can add sentences Hindi, and in fact we will be really glad if you do so, the reason Hindi is not listed is because we have yet no contributor nor no sentences in this language, and not because we do not like Hindi or whatever ^^. It's just that a language appears in the interface as soon as we have some sentences in it.
the process to have a new language added in tatoeba is explained here
http://tatoeba.org/eng/faq
*psst* to make me happy: tell me what kind of flag I should make for Hindi^^
The idea that a language should equate a flag is at the heart of most wars as it has been over thousands of years...
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or the official signs of the www: jp, en, es, de, eo, ru, ...
The 3-letter code is already used, ISO 639-3.
Flags are simple, well-known and happy, but everyone's here know their cons ;)
> or the official signs of the www: jp, en, es, de, eo, ru, ...
It's not better than flags, since country is not equal to a language.
Hi, Hindi is spoken in India...
Well, a lot of languages are spoken in India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of...on_territories
But me too I think India flag could be fine :)
actually, around 400 languages are spoken in India...
What about the languages spoken in both Pakistan and India ? And Bangladesh and India ? And Sri Lanka and India ?...Should Tibetan also be represented by the People's Republic of China's flag ?!
No, but by the Tibetan flag yes, as it exists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Tibet
It's obvious that flag system isn't perfect, but it works fine for now, doesn't it?
If you don't think so, sacredceltic, why don't you use your creativity for creating a new flag for each language in the world? I'm sure you will like them.
No, however "practical" the equation might seem, I disagree with the very idea that a language should be symbolised by a flag. A flag is a banner for armies and nations and has nothing to do with languages whatsoever, as languages span borders, and nations regroup different linguistic communities.
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And the "British" flag is particularly inappropriate since "Britain" includes Wales and Scotland, united under duress by the English, and where local languages include Celtic languages such as Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. English has been imposed there by force.
So the English language should be, at best, represented by the England flag, ie the red cross of St George on white...
Most people will be confused though. I did not know about this difference until this WM, when we played against England (of course we won ;-), and they showed the red-on-white flag. Most people are more familiar with the British flag.
Maybe, but the British flag as a symbol of the English language is negating to the celtic languages from Britain, and as such is abusive.
You might as well say that using the American flag is negating to he Hispanic languages and thus abusive. At over 10%, far more people in America speak French than speak any celtic language in Great Britain (around 2% by my calculations).
Indeed, the USA is a multilingual country where large communities speak Spanish, Yiddish, Amerindian languages, German, French, etc...
So that the USA flag doesn't associate in any way with a given language.
At the State level, nowadays, multiple languages are used for administrative purposes.
It might well be that in the near future, new languages might be declared official at the federal level as well...Spanish is already dominant in a few southern States.
Oops. I totally wrote 'French' where I meant to write 'Spanish'.
What's there to debate about the flag system? It's the most clear-cut, intuitive way to designate languages. Of course there are flaws, but I doubt you could make anything perfect without sacrificing the wonderful simplicity of the current set-up.
Of course you could design a symbolic set where every language is perfectly matched to every icon one-to-one in a politically correct manner, but then no one, except the hardcore linguists (if even), will understand the majority of the designations.
Minority groups that have their own flags/banners should have them used out of respect. If they don't, something should be made for them (out of respect). In that case, most people won't recognize the "flags" anyway, and so they could be more liberally put together.
Regarding British/American, that's a tough call. Culturally, it should be Britain, but by number of speakers it should be the U.S. It's really a question of what country most people first think of when they think of the English language (and that's abstract, and probably better decided by a poll).
Decreeing that the English language prevails over Britain because the English troops and colonisation have enforced it for centuries over celtic populations is no different from decreeing that Chinese rule and language should prevail over Tibetan or Uighur. In both cases it is nothing else than linguistic imperialism as part of general imperialism. The Empire dies hard...
All I'm "decreeing" is that English is the most common of all the languages, official, and unofficial, used in the United Kingdom by a long way. That's a fact.
It's also a fact that there are Welsh language primary schools, for those who want to use them, so it's hardly 'imperialism' at work.
Yes it is. The very British flag is an imperialist flag, superimposing the English St George's cross over its dominion flags of Wales and Scotland.
It's like the People's Republic of China would superimpose its red flag over the Tibetan as its new flag to assert its rule, adding insult to occupation...
It is a fact that Welsh and Gaelic are British languages as well, which actually predated English on this island by several hundreds of years, so there is no reason for the British flag to symbolise English and it is actually offensive to speakers of Celtic languages in Britain.
> Decreeing that
> the English language prevails over Britain
> because the English troops and colonisation have enforced it
> for centuries over celtic populations is no different
> from decreeing that
> Chinese rule and language should prevail over Tibetan or Uighur.
> the English language prevails over Britain
> Chinese rule and language should prevail over Tibetan or Uighur.
Of course it’s different.
In the first case you just state the fact without stating your opinion.
In the secong case you give your opinion.
I think you entirely miss the point. This is, alas, no mere bickering but an actual drama unfolding daily under our own eyes, and I will try to open yours to it:
In the People's Republic of China, for instance (but I can cite many other such examples in India, Indonesia, Russia, Iran, ...), the authorities use exactly the same argument that Bull_Pit used, ie that "only a minority of inhabitants in Tibet want to learn Tibetan in primary schools".
The reason for that is twofold:
1) The Han chinese settlers now outnumber Tibetans in Tibet.
2) Learning Tibetan in Tibet will make you, at best, a jobless second-class citizen, and at worst will get you into trouble with the authorities at some point.
Well, you see, that is PRECISELY what happened in Wales and Scotland over several centuries. Celtic languages' speakers there were considered second-class citizens, and ended up either cleared and forcefully sent to America, in the case of most Gaelic Scotts, or working - and dying young- in the British mines as unskilled workforce in the case of the Welsh, as will probably happen to the unskilled remnants of tibetan speakers in Tibet, being shipped to Outer Mongolia...
Every year, several languages are just wiped out from this planet for exactly the same reason: Cultural marginalisation through domination.
That is why large and reputable internet organisations such as Wikipedia - and not only my "trolling" self - have chosen to use ISO codes rather than flags to symbolise languages, not for silly "political correctedness" as you seem to all believe here, but because using flags is not only stupid http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html but ACTUALLY contributes to the destruction of cultures and the wiping out of languages, each passing day, including in "English-speaking" countries such as the USA or England (Cornish was wiped out...), because the flag symbol and its national association is so powerful that most people simply end up IGNORING the existence of other languages in a given country. Most people ignore history or are forgetful, and who cares for a disappearing minority language ?
WP has a small section on this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag#Linguistic_flags
Indeed, but what is important is that WP does NOT use flags to symbolise languages, but codes !
I wouldn't mind this for English.
http://englishwithectormorales....mb-200x171.gif
(It's a diagonally split UK/USA flag, if it doesn't show up)
Then you could have the UK flag for British English and the USA flag for American English.
this will be my only contribution on this thread before we make with Trang and final and clear position of "tatoeba" on this
"who cares for a disappearing minority language ? " => we care
we have these minority language, to take your example of china, we do have Uyghur and shanghainese, and you will see we care a lot about it because shanghainese is the only language in tatoeba to have been entirely recorded, in the specific goal to have quickly a ressource for this language, and a quick, and even deep research will show you it's the biggest audio ressource for education/study purpose which exist over the whole internet
for the code, we use them, the iso 639-3 alpha3 code to be exact, a quick over url will show you this.
flag are purely graphical element and we knew when we add it that this system, that it has limitation and it is controversial, but it's only a graphical element, the wall database and internal structure is all about iso code, to make things obvious for "common people"
that's all, I will not comment the other parts of this thread,
It is not "controversial" it is LETHAL.
"Common people" just take your flags for granted and that is the very heart of the problem!
Whether you use internal ISO codes is smart but irrelevant to the debate, really. Again, the issue is about CULTURAL DOMINATION and SMOTHERING of DYING languages.
As for flags being more practical than codes for visual identification, honestly, how many of the "common people" know more of the Uyghur or Shangainese flag than of their corresponding letter codes ?
Reversely, who ignores that ENG stands for English and FRA for French ?
it is relevant, it means that we don't have chosen flag as a definitiv answer to the problem of representing a language.
"Reversely, who ignores that ENG stands for English and FRA for French ? "
my shanghainese girlfriend who doens't deal with latin alphabet ignored it, ask any chinese,(and not mention Deu for german, CMN for mandaring) and I've heard somewhere latin alphabet is not widely used in many countries, why latin letter? are you for the CULTURAL DOMINATION of latin alphabet ?
all to say it's irrelevant, the shanghainese flag didn't exist, the same for yiddish.
People native from this endangered languages contribute, and even proposed these flags.
it's only something visual, and talking about it only waste time who could have been used to promote them.
No, I'm not in favour of any domination, and subsequently I support an international standard that is available to all (ISO), rather than debatable pictures that have no agreed legitimacy.
ok, so don't worry, as said in my first participation, we're going to talk about this with trang, and as said after, we do agree that flag will not be the long term solution. so we will take your point of view, and the other point of view expressed here to make our final decision.
does it seem ok for you?
Ce n'est pas un problème personnel, et ce d'autant moins que puisque je me suis fait traiter de "troll" par Trang lorsque j'osai émettre un avis alternatif à votre consensus mou, j'ai décidé que je ne contribuerai plus à votre projet.
Vous m'apparaissez comme un petit club fermé et paranoïaque (ce qui est souvent le cas de telles bulles) et non pas un projet "ouvert" et accueillant aux contributions de l'extérieur comme vous prétendez l'être.
Mais en effet, que ça ne vous empêche pas d'arrêter de promouvoir la domination des langues majeures:
Ce n'est pas parce qu'on a cru tout savoir qu'on ne peut pas changer d'avis...
ma proposition que tu puisses utiliser les données que nous avons accumulé bon gré mal gré, pour pouvoir commencer, sans avoir à tout refaire depuis 0, un meilleur projet que le notre, tiens toujours. Et je pense qu'aucune personne ne t'empêchera d'en faire la promotion ici même, vox populi, voix dei, si les gens trouvent ce nouveau projet mieux que le notre nous ne pourrons que nous incliner.
Il est juste à noter que la déclaration universelle des droits de l'Homme donne à tout peuple le droit de disposer de lui même, et jusqu'à présent aucune langue n'a été ajouté sans qu'un natif ou un proche de la langue ne propose son drapeau. Si une personne de cette langue trouve un drapeau mal convenu et préférerait un autre, ou juste le code iso 639, alors nous prendrons en compte cette décision. Donc je pense que ce serait contre ce droit que dire à des natifs "non vous n'avez pas le droit de montrer votre drapeau symbole de votre culture, parce que 3 caractère c'est plus mieux.
Excuse-moi, mais je pense que tu es hors sujet. Tu n'as pas bien lu mes réponses précédentes, je crois. En effet, le problème, ce ne sont pas les natifs et leurs pathétiques drapeaux, mais bien les non-natifs, ceux qui ne connaissent pas ces langues et pour lesquels la puissante association mentale entre les langues dominantes et les nations véhiculées par les drapeaux contribuent à les enfoncer dans cette ignorance et donc à marginaliser ces langues.
Les natifs, eux, drapeau ou pas, sont de toutes façons condamnés à devenir des sous-citoyens de ces grandes nations.
certes mais ces pathétiques personnes ont des droits.
et ce ne serait pas très démocratique :p
et je ne demande qu'à voir ce que tu fais pour la promotion de ces langues, pour que nous puissions prendre exemple sur toi.
Ta réaction est typiquement paranoïaque: Si un membre est en désaccord avec un des aspects de votre projet, il doit partir. C'est de l'autisme, en plus d'être anti-démocratique.
Je n'ai pas l'intention de fonder un projet alternatif. Je m'intéresse simplement depuis fort longtemps à l'apprentissage des langues (j'en ai moi-même appris 8 et je continue...) et j'ai trouvé cette initiative intéressante. Ca ne veut pas dire qu'elle n'était pas perfectible. Je n'ai pas non plus indiqué que j'exigeais quoique ce soit. Je me suis contenté de faire quelques suggestions, à l'évidence malvenues et j'ai fini par me faire insulter pour cela.
Je trouverai d'autres initiatives du genre, peut-être plus ouvertes, qui voudront bien recevoir mes contributions sans me vouer aux gémonies. It's a free world!
Given your passion for anti-imperialism, sacredceltic, you must have done quite a lot of work in support of these minority groups around the world. I, for one, am very curious to hear about them...
Oh, after the bull_pit, now the lesson giver...
Well, it is not necessary to be a militant to have an opinion but I defend minority languages (and not "groups" as you curiously seem to imply) and as an Esperanto proponent, I stand for equal linguistic rights and diversity against uniformity and globishization.
No, no lessons. I was just curious, since this is something I have a passion for (and probably a number of people on this site, as well). I just wanted to know if your energy had been put into things other than internet posts.
So we've got Pit_Bull, Lesson_Giver, and... I think we need a concise and witty name for sysko as well ;-)
I'm an autist paranoïd. Seems people with mental disease can't participate to open project, only sacredceltic and people with "normal" mind can.
I like it. I say we reserve these as user names for when we join sacredceltic's translation project website.
I agree with you FeuDeRenais, because for the moment, I see only one place with shanghainese audio, Uyghur, esperanto, with same right than "major" languages.
err..."bull_pit", actually.
Well, my activities are none of your concern. I happen to be posted in front of this screen for reasons that are personal and I use the wasted time to learn languages and contribute different online projects, personal or collective. I think internet is a great opportunity for activism.
As for you,
as a Russo-USian (the 2 least imperialist states in the world...), I doubt you grasp the pledge for minority languages very well...
I am an "old-european" as they name us and we learned respect towards minorities the same way we did democracy...the hard way, through centuries of internicine wars...
sysko is "paranoïd_androïd"
I do think FeuDeRenais as "some" consideration for minority languages
http://tatoeba.org/fre/sentence...ne/indifferent
and making opinion of someone looking to his nationality is a great proof open mind.
same as making an opinion on internet activity, dots at the end of sentences, or proponent of international standards...
You like hunting as a pack, don't you ?
Funny how these close paranoïd communities always end-up acting as pathetic lynchingmobs!
do we need to be perfect to make critics ?
says who ?
Sysko, is there a limited to the number of nested responses? Right now I can't even see what I'm typing since the scrollbar is covering the text area.
THere should probably be a limit.
2 solutions to this problem:
1) Copy & paste from elsewhere
2) stop responding...
One ought to be careful with what they put in their profiles, eh...? Especially when people like you are ready to bring personal details into these (kinda pointless) debates.
Actually, I'm currently logging in from a tiny oasis town in Xinjiang. Just came back from a small Uighur restaurant where we tried (my Uighur is still not very good, but I'm working on it) to discuss a whole number of things - some of which bordered on the things you brought up and which I probably shouldn't post here since the internet is monitored (damn imperialism...). But my activities are no business of yours, either. I just wanted to fend off this "Russo-USian" image you cast on me.
yep FeuDeRenais big brother SacredCeltic is watching you (oh god I'm still paranoid:()
Big Brother, I can deal with him. But Big Brother SacredCeltic... 真的没办法。。。
well, at least my Big brother syndrome is still mild as I, for one, don't scrutinise the dots in contributions yet...
I'm sure you're a hero and I am honoured that you divert so much time to me from your heroïc quest...
Not in the least. I just love this stuff.
For future note, since exchanges with you seem to go on endlessly, I am limiting any future replies to your comments to one/day :-)
I cannot remember requesting that you respond to my posts. I cannot remember requesting anything from anyone here. I just dared make 3 suggestions as well as protest mildly against dot-harassment from bull_pit. I actually didn't expect a response, let alone name-calling or even a bloodthirsty pack of idle wolves.
As for aggressiveness, you chose to intervene in the debate with a blunt "What's there to debate about the flag system?" which to me sounds like censorship or at best like an impediment to a sound debate...Obviously, our standards of communication differ significantly. My own protocol does not include name-calling and mob lynching.
Concerning the seemingly endless nature of our exchange, I just happen to receive your replies to my posts in my inbox, and find them sufficiently controversial to feel compelled to respond. It is actually up to you.
And yes, my energy has been initially employed in this community trying to correct dozens of bad translations from Japanese into English and French (just check my record) until bull_pit exhausted me with his dot-harrassment and Trang called me a "troll" because I suggested ISO standards and automated dot-missing algorithms...
With all due respect, I think they both had valid points, though.
Sentences DO show up on the front page as soon as they're added/corrected, and people who are on here a lot (i.e. the mods), will automatically tell you to add a dot, etc. as soon as they see it. It's a reflex. It really is nothing personal. I've done it too. Yea, it kinda feels dumb to correct people on such simple things, but those are standards.
Regarding your attitude... I really don't know you and so can't judge, but it does come off as aggressive and disrespectful if one had to judge by the posts. Maybe not to you, but it does create friction for a lot of us... Which is not productive for the group as a whole. I've no comments on the "trolling", personally.
I do not challenge the obvious necessity to correct contributions and I did it myself. What I debate, however, is the speed with which obviously idle moderators jump at my throat each time I forget a dot, to harp on.
Actually, I intended to correct sentences on-the-fly and review them later to see whether I had forgotten anything (I am alas a mere mortal and not a superhero like you are), which happens every so often as our lesser minds focus on one mistake and overlook further mistakes in the process...
Unlike some I don't have endless spare time to waste in arguments on the Internet. So I'll keep this short.
Only the last 10 sentences are shown on the front page. I only see sentences missing full-stops and capitalisation if they are on the front page. The first five minutes after they appear is often the last chance there is to point out mistakes before they disappear.
Obviouslyyou do have a lot of spare time and never miss anopportunityto spot a missingdot!
unless that is because I am one of the rare contributors...No wonder!
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a) This is counter-intuitive for many languages: ‘cmn’ for Chinese MaNdarin, ‘epo’ for EsPerantO, ‘kat’ for Kartuli, ‘nob’ for Norwegian Bokmål, ‘non’ for Norwegian Nynorsk, ‘ron’ for Romanian
b) The icons will be harder to distinguish (as they’re just black-on-white text, unlike flags)
c) Latin script is not neutral. ;) At least not more neutral than flags.
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I like this initiative, but its aims seem to be different from what we need.
It’s just one symbol that is intended to mean “Select language” in different colours and sizes.
A flag of India will probably work best. If other Indian languages are added, then you can make a flag of India with the letters "हि" superimposed.
ok we will do so then :). thanks for all the sentences you've already added in this language.