BANAT-L Archives

Archiver > BANAT > 1999-05 > 0925981960


From: Carsten Laekamp <>
Subject: Re: [BANAT-L] Languages
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 11:12:40 +0200


On Wed, May 05, 1999 at 11:13:59PM -0600, wrote:
> Oh good, another thread on what's appropriate--actually I enjoy these, as
> long as the arguments are civil.
>

Hmmm, I'd prefer discussions on food ;)

>
> I am curious, though--most of the traffic is in English, is a similar
> service given to, say, our German members?

I think that there are too many messages in English here to do that.

> Internet users have their shortcuts:
> LOL for Laughing Out Loud
> :) or :>) for a Grin/Joke
> BTW for By The Way
> IMHO for In My Humble Opinion, etc., etc.

Do you realise that LOL, BTW and IMHO are *not* international ? Although someone who's used to Usenet will understand them straight away (but how about the other, less frequent shortcuts ?), this isn't necessarily the case for everyone, esp. those who use mostly non-English mailing lists.

Therefore, be careful when assuming that something is universal.

> Are there any universal shortcuts we should be using for genealogy which
> could transend language, besides capitalizing the surname, using + for
> death oo for marriage, etc.?

Apart from those you mentioned, I don't see too many. Maybe the code used for RSL/sgs.* subject lines. But these aren't universal either... guess there are more people on the 'Net who understand English than those who understand such specialised code. ( BTW: RSL=Roots Surname List, sgs.*=soc.genealogy.surnames.* :-) ).

> Initial suggestion:
>
> For the Banat Archives, place English messages in one labeled archive,
> German messages in another, Romanian in another, etc. It'd probably be too
> much to ask to have a German message and its English translation
> cross-linked between the two separate archives, but that's my $0.02

I'd still prefer to be able to follow a thread in one archive, even if this means running a message through Babelfish (but, OTOH, I'm not sure if Babelfish will do Romanian or Hungarian).

Note to one of the previous posters: sorry to have written this in English and not American ;-)

--
Carsten Läkamp

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