Let me cut out one or two pieces I consider very important: > We communicate in English but that doesn't mean we all the same cultural > background. My native language doesn't do small talk and doesn't have a > word for please.
Now of course this will cause friction. I've noticed it especially with germanic and slavic languages that are more terse than english. For example "Sit down!" is acceptable in all situations in german, but is slightly rude in english and brutally rude in french. There you'd say "Would you please sit down?" in most social situations, unless you want to anger someone. (German carries most of the difference in the inflection and doesn't need multiple phrases to express the same thing) You can extrapolate the friction this can and will cause. So unless someone actively personally insults me I'll just assume it got lost in translation. And there's little we can do about it because many people don't notice these translation issues or don't know english well enough to express themselves with the needed refinement. > A short and to the point message is the easiest to understand. ... and the easiest to misunderstand. Either way we lose ;) Personally I think the tone has improved a lot over the last $timeunit, I also have my personal theory how that happened, but I don't want to be burnt as a heretic. So let's not get too hung up on single words, stop floodmailing and resume fixing bugs, mmmhkay? All the best, Patrick
