Visvanath Ratnaweera

Hi Oliver

Ganz einfach: Das Upgrade ist schief gelaufen. Sag dem Dienstleister, dass a) er auf das letzte Backup von 3.1 zurueck gehen soll und b) dir eine _Kopie_ davon testweise upgraden soll.

Nebenfrage: Was vermisst du in der Version 3.1 was du unbedingt brauchst und in 3.2 vorhanden ist?

Hi Andy, hi Matt

Thanks for the loads of information! English is not my subject, neither my language, not even my (chosen) second language. So the information you both have provided is very useful.

@Andy, thanks for answering some (points 1 and 2) of my (weird) questions. I wish, things were less complicated. As I wrote earlier to Mary ("wasting everybody's time"), it is very important for me to know which way.

Trying to digest the available answers, more questions pop up:
6. Now the term "native English speaker" is defined, who has the authority to talk for them?

7. Is being a "native English speaker" some sort of a qualification? For example, to disqualify a forum post, even if it is about a subject the said native English speaker has no clue?

Hi Mary

Personal? Don't you see that it is critical for me to know whether the thousands of posts I made in moodle.org, spanning over a decade, are unintelligible, thus wasting everybody's time, or our community manageress just had a misfire?

Thanks for the definition of a native speaker, very useful.

Yes, I realize that terms Queen's English and Oxford English are UK-centric. It so happened that we in the Indian Subcontinent got English from them!


@Howard
"think about putting that more diplomatically"! [bells ringing]

Frankly, I am not famous for diplomacy nor for being politically correct. No, regrets, I lived a good life without all that!

About heavy-handed moderation, I don't see why I should subject myself, or my voluntary work to such a treatment. I know one thing: I don't need a (community) manageress to cleanse my words!


You being a moderator reminded me that I was a moderator too (on moodle.org), and why I am no more. (That chapter is definitely over, so let us not to talk about it.)

Hi Andy and Howard

Thanks for the discourse. Things are getting complicated though. My original questions are still unanswered directly:
>>> 1. Who are the native English speakers?
>>> 2. If they (whoever they are) don't understand, nobody whose first language is not English won't understand either, right?
>>> 3. How many of my posts https://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=41095 are unintelligible? (Apparently German speakers do understand me https://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=41095&course=18, a language which I learned at a much later stage of my life. Or are they too polite to complain? Talking of "them", the same question: Who is a native German speaker?)
>>> 4/ I understand that the native English speakers have a common language (Queen's English?, Oxford English?, ...). What do non-natives write? How do they understand each other? (Notice that I did not say _speak_ - I have seen tourists gesticulating - I mean written communication, e.g. in an on-line forum.)
>>> 5. Talking of on-line forums, when I answer a post addressing the OP, do all the natives have to understand it?

But new information keeps coming in. One thing that caught my eye was even native speakers don't understand each other! That shakes the whole foundations of the argument "difficult for native English speakers to understand" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=340089#p1370643. What native speakers our community manageress was talking about?

Hi all

Thanks for the round of answers. I was aware of the danger of going off-topic. Then thought, on Lounge nothing is off-topic! Still, I will stay with the two topics which are important to me.

>>>> Recently our community managress went on a personal crusade cleansing forum content which are "difficult for native English speakers to understand" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=340089#p1370643.

That discussion itself is not the topic. It is dead, or more accurately, frozen alive in the so called "Closed discussions" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=7157. Quote "Discussions can get moved here if they are highly off-topic or had become clearly unproductive. This forum is read-only." (Of course it is not the full discussion and @Andy, I am flattered to hear that you still remember the original.)

1. No, the statement which sent me spiraling was, "difficult for native English speakers to understand, let alone for people whose first language is not English" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=340089#p1370643.
- Who are the native English speakers?
- If they (whoever they are) don't understand, nobody whose first language is not English won't understand either, right?
- How many of my posts https://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=41095 are unintelligible? (Apparently German speakers do understand me https://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=41095&course=18, a language which I learned at a much later stage of my life. Or are they too polite to complain? Talking of "them", the same question: Who is a native German speaker?)
- I understand that the native English speakers have a common language (Queen's English?, Oxford English?, ...). What do non-natives write? How do they understand each other? (Notice that I did not say _speak_ - I have seen tourists gesticulating - I mean written communication, e.g. in an on-line forum.)
- Talking of on-line forums, when I answer a post addressing the OP, do all the natives have to understand it?

There are many more. I am very keen to find answers.

2. The BBC article: "With non-native English speakers outnumbering native speakers, it’s up to Anglophones to learn how to speak their language within a global community" http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161215-you-need-to-go-back-to-school-to-relearn-english

I noticed that it is provocative (@Matt melodramatic). In this age of Internet news one has to be inventive to be read, even a legend like BBC is not an exception. More importantly, the article suggests that there are native and non-native speakers. Back to item 1.

@Andy and Marcus, so do you say, the moodle.org forum posts need to be free of idioms and humour?

@Matt, you said
> Speaking different languages is sometimes less confusing because we don't expect to understand and be understood all the time, compared to different cultural/social groups who share the same language, (e.g. Canadians, Brits, Americans, and Australians) where there's an implicit expectation of understanding and being understood. It's not just in the words, metaphors, and idiomatic expressions we use, it's the way we say them; things like sarcasm, irony, and humour often look and sound very different in different cultures.

Liked that one! But the continuation:
> much of this is lost in online, text-based environments like forums, but which I think, in some ways, makes it easier to understand and be understood;
is more general and much harder to tackle than a forum post in moodle.org giving answer to a specific technical question, the case which triggered the whole discussion. (See also the last bullet point of item 1.)