Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 20:59:03 +0200 From: Xenna <xennarnopsamo.com> Subject: Re: winter tyres with rims
Xenna wrote: > r. van westerhoven wrote: > >> Ik heb nog vier winterbanden met velg liggen van mijn Saab 9000 >> maat 195/65 R 15 >> 4 gaten >> >> Wil iemand hier een bod op doen? >> Ik woon in de buurt van Amsterdam > > Don't post in Dutch in international newsgroups please. I'll reply to myself with my motivation instead of replying to each of you personally. English is actually a minority language in the world. It is, however, the lingua franca of the Internet. There are thousands and probably more languages in the world. Dutch is spoken by a mere 20 million or so. I am one of them in case you thought I was an English bigot. Imagine this group and others that have no charter that forbids use of mini-languages. Suppose multi language posting really picks up. In a few years there could be hundreds of Saab related messages posted in this groups in hundreds of different languages. I'm not religious, but I know the story of Babylon, and the Babelfish doesn't seem to work very well does it? It doesn't require a lot of imagination to see that such a group would be rather useless. Suppose 10% of the postings were in English. Would you ever bother to seek them out? I wouldn't, even if I speak 4 languages (like most educated Dutch people). The nice thing about international newsgroups is that you can read about other countries. Even something as simple as 'winter tyres for sale' can contain interesting info, if you live half way around the world yourself. Nice, but only if people take the trouble of writing in a commonly understood language. I'm sure Robert could do that if he wanted. To keep the international groups useful something must be done before the 10% English posts number is reached, I hope everyone agrees. Why not start while there's still a useful and understandable group? There's a perfectly good nl.* hierarchy where Dutch postings are welcome (and English postings are not). Start a nl.auto.saab group there, but don't destroy usenet by turning it into Babylon. I remember when I received my first spam message, it looked innocent enough on it's own, but then it started multiplying. Amen. X. BTW: Robert, why limit yourself by posting your ads in Dutch when there's 50 million Germans accross the border that could be craving for winter tyres...
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