Language - Question for Firaxis...

[Roman]

Originally posted by Earthling7
Sure, it's fine being proud of your own language, if you must. But my point was that I live in the Netherlands, a country of tounge uglier than Danish, and I am NOT Dutch. It has happened that I have bought games, found that they are in Dutch, understood little of it, misundertood the rest, and the gaming experience ends up being on a bar with doing the dishes.

I come from Iceland, and I can tell you, if Lincoln or LizI start talking Icelandic to me, I'll only go megalomaniac and never live in peace... or something like that. If they speak Dutch, it will be a 6000 year long vendetta against the world. So much for the improved diplomacy...

Exactly my problem - I am currently in Germany and my German is not good enough to enjoy playing any game in the language. I simply cannot buy a game that I will not understand and enjoy anyway.

[Alex]

Ok, this thread is starting to get a little creepy...

It is my opinion that English is a universal language because of political, economical and cultural reasons. USA is nowadays the most important and wealthy economy in the world (though some European countries are also important), and anything that affects USA will affect the rest of the world. Sad, but true.
On the cultural side of things, the american culture is widespread around the world, mainly because of movies and music. It is so natural to watch a movie English-spoken that when you watch a movie in your original language, you have that wierd sensation that there is something wrong. Again, sad but true.
On the other hand, I LOVE my language. I think Portuguese is a very cool, melodic and smooth language, more suited to music and poetry than other languages. But that is just my opinion. So I am not ashamed of my language. But, since English is the international language nowadays (sad etc.), I would like to have Civ3 in English, in order to fully take advantage of the many mods and scenarios that will surely come up on the net very soon.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Mads Raven
English is the main language of the whole world, therefore I think that people should at least have it as their second language. E.g. in Germany and Italy all their movies in the television are synchronized into their own language and therefore the Germans and Italians doesn´t learn the main language of the world: English.
When I have been travelling in these countries (and in Greece too), it is difficult to understand those people properly. In France they tend not to understand you because they belive, that French should be the main language of the world. If you want to be educated - speak English! Looks at these forums about Civ 3 they are all in English because the main language is ENGLISH. Got the facts?

You reduce a complex argument to some sentence I can't believe you wrote
French has been for a while the most "relevant" language of the World, as Greek and Latin before.
In Italy we spent few generations teaching French, Latin, sometime Greek. Not to mention we have still some culture point in our tradition, so we don't love the idea to abdicate our language to english (what english, then: USA's, GB's, Australian's?). We use a lot of english words (Computer area is the most relevant example, here), normally we don't translate in italian english songs, most of younger italian speak and understand english well enough to interact with others people (e.g. for tourism, or surfing Internet).

English doesn't deserve to be the only language of the world: you can see very well, i.e. looking at USA large use of Spanish, that the future will probably change the "standard" english into a Lingua Franca with many terms from Spanish, German, Italian, probably Japanese and Chinese, too.

The concept of having the original version available as an option, at the side of the translated version (on the same CD Rom, same manual) is the best. Look, the original version, not necessary the english one

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
English doesn't deserve to be the only language of the world:

Maybe not for the "real" world, but it deserves to be the main language in the computer world, and with that I mean it shouldn't only be the main lanugage on web sites, but also in games

[Vrank Prins]

Originally posted by ADG
Maybe not for the "real" world, but it deserves to be the main language in the computer world, and with that I mean it shouldn't only be the main lanugage on web sites, but also in games

It's good to have a lingua franca in which different nationalities can communicate. I don't mind having to use anglo here. I'm saying "having to use" because if possible I really prefer to use my own native language being dutch (frisian). It is not a matter of whether anglo deserves to be the lingua franca of the world, because that's moreorless a moral question and thus a rather subjective one. It is a matter of practicality, and I know that as a dutchman (a frisian to be more precise) I have certain advantages in having to use anglo over those who don't have a germanic language as their native language.

Being here on this website using dutch is impossible. But when I play a game (single mode) I'm on my own at home. I shouldn't have to use another language there.

Here's a little historical background on "lingua franca's".
When I was in Iceland (beautiful country and really friendly people !!!!) this summer, I visited an exhibition on 1000 years christianity in Reykjavik. A lot of the historical exhibits being shown there were old deeds, really old parchment stuff from the middle-ages. There was one deed from around 1500 which I could easily read and understand (I'm an archivist and trained in paleography (old scripture)). It was a letter from the danish king, conceived at the danish court in Copenhagen, directed to a parish somewehere in Iceland giving them certain rights in return for certain duties. The deed was written in lower german (rather close to dutch), the lingua franca of the hanseatic world. And being a language so dominant and strong that it had become an official langauge at the danish court.

Things can change. Who knows our far future offspring will be using chinese as a lingua franca. I'm not that stuck to anglo, though chinese would give me lots of more difficulties to express my self, and being able to understand others. For me the easiest and quickest way to communicate, and understand things is in dutch.

[Earthling7]

Originally posted by Vrank Prins
When I was in Iceland (beautiful country and really friendly people !!!!)

I know

[Roman]

I still hope, I can get the English version.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Vrank Prins
Things can change. Who knows our far future offspring will be using chinese as a lingua franca. I'm not that stuck to anglo, though chinese would give me lots of more difficulties to express my self, and being able to understand others. For me the easiest and quickest way to communicate, and understand things is in dutch.

I wouldn't mind if the computer language change to something different (unless they try to change it into danish), the thing about the english language is that more people understand the english language than the french language or chinese language (I'm talking about the computerworlds people, I don't know how many chineese in % who have computers at home so I could be wrong here ), but if this changes in the future I wouldn't mind if the computer language changes...ok sure if it becomes chinese I think I'll have to buy a new keyboard (I've seen the chinese keyboard and that looked weird )