Language Tempest At Orkut 948
Quirk writes "Reuters is carrying an article outlining an ongoing headbutting session between English-speaking users of Goggle's orkut and the Portuguese-speaking users of Brazil. The orkut site has more than 769,000 members; 41.2% are Brazilians and 23.5% are Americans. The sites are now mostly in Portuguese, and English-speaking users are complaining that the service is intended to be in English. Orkut is a service meant to develop by way of invitation, and the Brazilians claim since they are inviting their Brazilian friends it doesn't make sense to communicate in English. Brazilian internet users averaged an estimated 13 hours and 51 minutes in May, eight minutes more than for Americans."
Article text posted here for your convience (Score:3, Informative)
But perhaps none of the battles has been so personal as the one being fought on the Internet.
Thousands of Brazilians have become devotees of Orkut (http://www.orkut.com [orkut.com]), a popular new social-networking site from Web search leader Google Inc.
Orkut allows members to organize themselves into online communities of friends, and friends of friends, to discuss everything from chess to sandwiches.
But the rush of Brazilians to join Orkut and rival social networking sites has upset some online users, who complain of a proliferation of messages posted in Portuguese, Brazil's native tongue.
Some users have even started communities specifically for people to air their gripes on this issue.
The United States has at least 153 million Internet users, compared with Brazil's 20 million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated its membership roster in June, outnumbering Americans for the first time.
The site says it has more than 769,000 members, making it one of the largest and most popular of its type on the Internet. About 23.5 percent of the users are from the United States, while another 41.2 percent are Brazilians.
Iranians are a distant third place at about 6 percent.
SELECTIVE MEMBERSHIP
Orkut, named after Google software engineer Orkut Buyukkokten, made its debut in January and is still in the testing stages. Part of its allure is its exclusivity -- one can only join at the invitation of another member.
"Orkut maps one's social prestige, and Brazilians are by nature gregarious," said Beth Saad, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's School of Communications and Arts.
Although more than one-fourth of Brazilians live in poverty, those who can afford Internet access have become avid Web surfers.
In terms of time spent on the Internet, Brazilians edged out the United States in May for the second month in a row, according to Ibope/NetRatings. The market researcher estimates that Internet use for Brazilians averaged 13 hours and 51 minutes in May, eight minutes more than for Americans.
The number of Brazilian visitors to community sites and online diaries rose 14.6 percent to 3.5 million in May from January, Ibope/NetRatings said.
Tammy Soldaat, a Canadian, got a sample of Brazilian wrath recently when she posted a message asking whether her community site on body piercing should be exclusive to people who speak English.
Brazilian Orkut users quickly labeled her a "nazi" and "xenophobe."
"After that I understood why everyone is complaining about these people, why they're being called the 'plague of Orkut,"' she said in a site called "Crazy Brazilian Invasion."
John Gibbs of Mountain View, California, has founded a community called "So many Brazilians on Orkut."
"When the average Orkut user goes to look at community listings to see what's out there, he'll see a list populated with pretty much all Portuguese communities," Gibbs said. "This is highly frustrating since Orkut is not a Brazilian service."
But Mateus Reis, a publicist who lives in Sao Paulo, said users should be free to write what they want, in the language of their choosing.
"Since we can invite anyone we want at Orkut, and my friends are Brazilians, it doesn't make sense talking to them in English," Reis said in Portuguese. "I use the language I know."
His compatriot Pablo Miyazawa has a more moderate view.
"Brazilians have the right to create anything they want in any language they want," Miyazawa said. "The problem is to invade forums with specific languages and write in Portuguese. Brazilians are still learning how to behave in the Net."
AN INTERNET FORCE
The Brazilians' ardor for the Internet extends to other community-based sites, and Web ent
Re:Why Fight? (Score:3, Informative)
More American Arrogance? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Times (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why Fight? (Score:4, Informative)
As an Orkut member I do find the behaviour of some of its users annoying (Orkut-wide and community-wide spamming by a very small handful of people, people who ignore the rules of the communities that they join, etc) but I find that it's not that inconvenient compared to what I've got out of my Orkut experience. I've made at least a dozen real-world friends that I regularly go out with, and several more that are online only at this stage, and that's only after three months' membership.
Yes there are plenty of Brazilians on the site, and yes, they do have a tendency to join every community that even half interests them (it's like some people play a game of "let's see how many communities I can join", and they seem to do the same with collecting friends too) but that's not just a trait exclusive to them: users of other nationalities can be just as bad.
I'll also point out that Portuguese isn't the only non-English language used on Orkut. I've seen several, including ones that you wouldn't immediately think of, such as Arabic.
Live and let live is what I say. On Orkut and elsewhere.
Re:our just desserts (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why Fight? (Score:5, Informative)
I know that your trying to be sarcastic, but I did find this to be true. I did an 11 country tour of Europe a while back and I never had any problems communicating in English. If one person couldn't understand me, a passerby would eventually over hear and graciously translate.
I doubt this would be the case if I spoke chinese, japanese, hindi, or in orkuts case, portugese.
Of South America, I've only traveled to Chile and Venezuala, but my experiences their were even more english friendly. People would insist on speaking English so as to brush up their skills. I speak far more Spanish here in Miami than I ever did in South America.
I'm not saying English 'should' be the most universaly accepted language, but it does seem to fit the role pretty good.
Re:Why Fight? (Score:5, Informative)
If the Brazilians were nice enough to fork and create groups that discussed topics in Portuguese, it wouldnt be a big deal. Orkut should have an upgrade right now, providing an "official group language" field for groups, so one can tell if they're joining the "Simpsons - English" or "Simpsons - Portuguese" groups. But many of the Brazilians walk in, act like they own the place, and hijack Orkut. I dont use it anymore for this reason.
Re:It's not intended to be an *English* service... (Score:2, Informative)
That said, there's a transition language, called Portuñol, spoken in Brazilian borders, which can usually be understood by both Spanish and Portuguese speakers. And because of recent Mercosur expansion (and related economic opportunities), Spanish is being seriously considered as a second language by a lot of people in Brazil.
Re:maybe Im missing something (Score:2, Informative)
Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
Re:More American Arrogance? (Score:2, Informative)
And besides, if we are as bad as you think we are why does your country keep allowing us to enter to visit those tourist sites?
Re:But what about... (Score:4, Informative)
Properly spelled it would have to be 'oorkut' though.
That seems fine (Score:3, Informative)
And of course, it also seems perfectly valid for others to set up Portuguese-only, French-only, or whatever-only communities.
I belong to some English-only communities, and to some Portuguese-only communities.
Those are the only two languages in which I am capable of contributing. I guess I could probably follow discussions in Spanish or French, and I could probably get the gist of what was being said in Italian, but I am not capable of responding in any of these languages, so I only look at communities in English and Portuguese.
It doesn't bother me if there are communities that speak any of the multitude of languages I don't speak. I don't get why some people from the country where I was born (USA) think everyone should speak their language in every community and discussion on Orkut.
I'd like to point out that even if Brazilians were forced to have all their discussions in English, many of them would still be "Greek" to most Americans. For example, I belong to a community called "São Paulo odeia Paulo Maluf" ("São Paulo hates Paulo Maluf"). It's a place to talk about one of the politicians running for Mayor of São Paulo, and there are some pretty entertaining discussions going on there now. While most Brazilians know who Maluf is, and everyone in São Paulo has an opinion about him, most Americans haven't got the faintest idea of who he is (and I suspect they don't care, except that he's of Middle Eastern descent). So why on Earth should discussions in that community be in any language other than Portuguese?!
--Mark
Re:Well, the English speakers have a point (Score:2, Informative)
If you're going to correct someone, you should get your facts straight.
Re:Why Fight? (Score:5, Informative)
Well I'm an Orkut member and I'll tell you what the problem is. The problem is that your inboxes are constantly filled with Portugese spam that is sent to "foo community." Every community has its share of Portugese spam. Whether it's US specific or not. It's really annoying. An easy fix would be language specific communities, but everyone is too lazy to join thoses...
Re:Well, the English speakers have a point (Score:5, Informative)
However, it is correct that Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken native language on earth. However, it's also worth noting that nearly all of those native speakers live in one country, and most of the rest live in countries are adjacent or very nearby.
Native English speakers, on the other hand, live in many countries all over the world. The largest geographically contiguous block are in the United States and Canada, but they are also in many other countries.
The numbers on native speakers of English and Spanish are also accurate if outdated; they are roughly equal.
However, it's when you bring in all of the non-native speakers that English shows its international dominance. English is by far the most widely spoken second language in the world. Nearly all speakers of Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi are natives, but there are more non-native than native English speakers in the world.
With regard to the language of Diplomacy, you're wrong there, too. French *was* the language of diplomacy for many years, but is so no longer and has not been for decades. It was replaced by English. If French is in fact the official language of the UN (you don't cite a source, but I'll take your word for it; I'm too lazy to cite sources tonight myself), that's the only place left in diplomacy where that is still true. Go to any embassy or consulate in the world and you can probably find someone on the staff who speaks English; you'd be hard put to find someone on the staff who speaks French, unless:
A) It's located in a Francophone country;
or
B) It's a French embassy or consulate.
I know a number of people who speak Japanese as a second language, a few who speak Mandarin and/or Cantonese as a second language, a couple who speak German as a second language and a few who speak Spanish as a second language, but the only French speakers I know are all natives. French just is not a terribly important international language anymore. That's not a criticism, just an observation; French is only important in Francophone countries.
Re:Why Fight? (Score:4, Informative)
It already does in a way. When you create a new group you can select the interface language. This does, however, not show up when you're not the community's creator.
If you join a community that has a Spanish interface, chances are communications there will be in Spanish.
I agree though that this doesn't really help with the problem at hand which is people taking over English-speaking communities and flooding them with foreign-language content (which is probably one of the rudest thing you can do on Orkut, as far as I am concerned - it's not that hard to start your own community).
Google's Orkut dev team should probably have a look at this when they redesign the community section (and they should really really implement sub-categories while they're at it).
Re:Why Fight? (Score:1, Informative)
English 'should' be the most universaly accepted
language, but it does seem to fit the role
pretty good."
And pretty "well" too. Seriously, food tastes
good, things are done well. See, English isn't
so hard after all.
Re:Well, the English speakers have a point (Score:2, Informative)
This is grossly factually inaccurate and it's hard to imagine where you ever came up with such an idea.
Re:Well, the English speakers have a point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tendência muito natural (Score:1, Informative)
I believe that one is about an absolutely natural trend in the evolção [evolution?] of any social network. The fact of the Brazilians to have taken the place of the Germans or Indians, was part for timing, part for coincidence. As one another commentary mentioned, many North Americans had finished ignoring invitations for the Orkut because of the fever it Friendster that already had passed for them, while this fever never arrived here in Brazil.
(I wait that he has sufficiently Brazilian for with points moderating there I hug.)
Re:Why Fight? (Score:1, Informative)
Try France: they won't.
Re:Language barrier (Score:4, Informative)
See www.slashdot.jp [slashdot.jp] and so on.
--
Evan
Re:It's not intended to be an *English* service... (Score:1, Informative)
I'd recommend you read the role that English played in the development of India over the last 200 years. Even today the country has about 20 major languages (most of them *official* - you can have a Government document in any of them) and about 1600 dialects of those languages, not all of which can be understood unambiguously by speakers of other dialects of the same language. In other words, it's a subcontinental Tower of Babel. It is also an interesting linguistic minicosm (it's hardly "micro") of the world. There are only two languages that play the role of national link - English (favored in the southern half, certainly in large cities) and Hindi (favored in the northern half, even in large cities).
The average urban 20-year old Indian today speaks only English when with peers, and a combination of English and a local language with parents. I use terms like "mother tongue" and "primary tongue" with extreme caution - how can, say, Marathi be considered someone's mother tongue if he cannot speak more than two sentences in it? Is it just because his ancestors spoke the language? What if he thinks in English and translates to the language of his ancestors on the fly for the benefit of less-educated people who don't speak English? What would his "mother tongue" be then? This is the stuff that the statistics don't capture.
You'd have to add 1/3 the population of India, the people who think in English, who were taught in English starting at age 2, who started learning a local language (if ever) only at age 12. We are closer to native speakers of English than you could possibly fathom. (Leave the accent aside, just judge us by what we *write*). When you add 300 million people to the number of English speakers worldwide...it certainly isn't a small minority even if it IS a minority.
And what is the social status of English in India? It's the most favored language, period. Most parents these days spend more to send their kids to a school that teaches in English than a school that teaches in, say, Kannada - even if they themselves did not speak English until they were 12. They realize that it is for the best of their kids, so that the kids can be upwardly mobile even when the parents could not be.
Those people in small Indian towns have understood something that the parent poster doesn't seem to have grasped. Stop maligning English. Start accepting the fact that it's the only viable global link language we have. It's much more valuable than you think.
Re:But what about... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Surely Google can address this technologically (Score:2, Informative)
Google can do it by themselves [google.com] already.
Translating: A very natural tendency (Score:1, Informative)
I hope there are enough Brazilians around with points to mod me up. Hugs.
--
My 2c: at least you Americans are enjoying the opportunity to get a (rather traumatic, but even though interesting) contact with our language. It's only sad that most people posting in Portuguese use a very lame style and a very low language level.
Re:Language barrier (Score:2, Informative)
USA is supposed to be in .US
Commercial entities are supposed to be in .COM
There is no .AM for "American" - .AM is Armenia
.com is not .us :-)
Fore more details see Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Call me pedantic, but