Greetings, everyone!
I just stopped at this topic today, and I couldn\'t get out of it without posting my opinion. ;-)
Well, my native language isn\'t English, as you can se by my \'Location\'. I speak Portuguese as native language, which is a little bit different from Portuguese spoken in Portugal and in Angola (which have their differences between them).
You don\'t find many people that can speak Portuguese out of the countries that have it as their native languages. Assuming this, I only speak in English when playing PS just because it makes the conversation EASIER. Up to now, I met most players speaking in English and some speaking in French... and ONLY ONE speaking in Portuguese, like me. :-P
I think it\'s part of the role-playing. In Dungeons&Dragons you have lots of languages. The great Tolkien do not created only one language which is spoken in all Middle-Earth. In my opinion, it also opens a door to another job in the game: translator. Why not?
For example, I\'m very good a Portuguese (duh!) and can speak English as well, but my Spanish is very poor and I only can count from 1 to 30 in Deutsch. And now? And if I meet a player that I know he has a very important information for me, but he speaks only a dialect spoken by members of a small village in South Oceania (maximizing the problem, of course)? What should I do? It\'s role-playing! It\'s a natural obstacle imposed by a worldwide dimensions game.
When I met this guy who speaks Portuguese (as I do), only the first phrases where in Portuguese. The rest of the dialogue we spoke in private (\'/tell\'), because I know there are people who don\'t like reading mixed language things (You are reading in English and suddenly appears something in Danish in the middle of the text) and I also know there are people who don\'t care. But I respect both.
Of course I don\'t mind to... err.. \'teach\' some Portuguese to those who are interested in during the game (although I know it isn\'t the game goal), because it isn\'t simply a game: it\'s also a great community we are forming.
One last thing: I read a message (don\'t remember who post it) in this topic saying that a little percentage of the WWW isn\'t in English. Hmmm... I think he should surf a little bit more in the
http://WWW. He\'ll discover tons of pages in Deutsch, in Portuguese, in French, and also (and mainly) in Spanish. Of course everybody has its own surfing habits and needs, and this is what leads more one to pages in a language than to others.
I apologize for this long e-mail, but this is what I think. And by the way this discussion was lead, I can\'t wait for the combat engine start working! Ahahah :-) :-P