At 09:06 12/03/04, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 03:09:16PM +0100, Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote a message of 19 lines which said: > that posting in English is a significant additional effort for many > of us - not to mention speaking in English at physical meetings or > even from a podium... It is clearly a problem in every international forum: IETF or RIPE (which are supposed to allow the participation of everyone on an equal basis) are quite difficult to master if you are not very proficient in spoken english.
The additional issue, identified in various studies and our daily experience is that the same people do not follow the same pattern of thinking when they use another language. The EUI (University European Institute - http://uei.it - made some interesting report in comparing the structure of a report in different languages - I do not find it back right now - I just asked them). One of the main problem of the commonly used american is that its "balancing" is binary - like in Basica (if/then) with short sentences. Most of the languages are ternary (if/then/else) with some flexibility. Latin languages (and French is probably the most complex) are more polystructural. This makes the strength of American as a international language and as a language for specialized Research communities. But it makes difficult to use when describing/investigating complex and multilateral relations, such as the societal governance of the Internet. There is a famous joke about this being the reason why multinational coporations are to be American. Brains are like CPUs. The used language has an incidence. This is addressed by most of the World organizations where each person use his/her own main langage. This is not only to use a language he/her knows, but also to use an ad hoc analysis/communication tool. ICANN - if to become a modern real world internet structure - is and therefore need to become multilingual. Each of us using his/her own or another language as he/she feels it appropriate. He/her could then summarize it in English language for common convenience. jfc