Non-English players

[Shangreloo]

I have a questions for Non English Speakers here.

Sometimes I correct my typos, sometimes I don't. It largely depends on whether or not I'm addressing a person who I know doesn't speak English as a first language, or if the error makes the meaning of my message ambiguous. Speaking German only minimally myself, I would probably be at a complete loss if confronted with mis-spelled words, typos, etc. But then, my German is hardly adequate enough to allow me to participate in a game in which only German is spoken without the use of an aid like babelfish. So I'm wondering, how do typos and mis-spelled words affect your understanding of what a person is saying?

[hitancrias]

Personally, I've not much problems with typo's of others. Most often my English is good enough to recognize a typo as a typo, so it won't confuse me too much. At the beginning abbreviations were more confusing. It takes some time to relate "sup?" to the "What are you up to?" we learned at school. To a lesser extend this also goes for slang. But normally I can understand others good enough. If there's confusion, it's most often caused by me.

If you notice that somebody's English skills are not good enough to understand you, simply chose a simpler wording.

[Bastiq]

I'm happy this game isn't finnish. If you have a closer look at that language you would find out that it's a vulcans nightmare

[Kalika]

In the Netherlands, about one third or maybe even half of the programs broadcasted on TV is in English (with subtitles).

i have two friends from teh netherlands...their english vocabulary rivals my own.

[Helm]

Thank you for this thread!

I am not English. My mother tongue is one of the most @#$%& in the world... I am currently leraning German, after learning Finnish, so I keep messing everything up... Thank you to all the native speakers that have enough patience to endure my bad english days...

*goes read some book before loosing completly her own mother tongue*

[Suno_Regin]

Most of the time, I can guess what people mean or are trying to say. But, it's pretty tough if the word is nowhere close to what it's supposed to mean.

[themule]

English is easy because many people in the world needed to learn it. So a small set of the English language has been isolated and developed, which is just enough to let you express yourself and have people understand you. This minimal English has somehow a simple grammar and a small set of words you need to learn. No such a thing exists for Italian, say, so Italian looks harder to learn.

English is hard because taking the next step is a neverending task: no one may claim to have a perfect and complete knowledge of the English language.

The biggest problem I have is lack of language style. When you use plain English people understand you but you sound, well, plain. Also my English tends to be very technical oriented. It's much easier for me to teach you how a filesystem works than to tell you the recipe for some sauce for pasta.

[lordraleigh]

I wished Esperanto was a global language.

Why?

1) Its neutral and independent of who is the superpower for now(In ancient times, Latin was the global language because of Roman Empire, in 18th and 19th century French and English because of the British Empire, now its English because of the US, hope the next won't be China or our future generations - not the case if Dubya decides to launch a nuclear war: cockroaches won't be able to learn languages - will have to lick the boots of the chinese "communist" party and learn that complicated language  )

2) It was designed mixing elements of all languages. This way it may be easier for everyone to learn.

3) Avoid stuff like "american posers" and cultural imperialism, like for example those third world guys with U.S flag T-shirts that speak few words of English, goes to Halloweens and hear only U.S. musics, and still dare to think they are leet.

4) Shows that no one has the right to impose his language to others just because they think they will "rule" the world forever. Empires rise and fall, mankind continues(And the more the citizens of the existing superpower are conscious of that, less will be the impact of the inevitable decline of the superpower, sooner or later, on their lives)
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In my opinion, English is not a very difficult language to learn, compared to German or French, for example.
Its main difficulty resides mainly in the ambiguous meaning of certain words, that have multiple translations with different meanings on other languages.