Language

[Krantarin]

I'm pretty curious about this. I know that our wonderful developers are Swedish, and we've seen Swedish in numerous parts of the game, but the forums are locked in British English, and the Swedish players seem to be quite adept with their usage of English.

Do you guys speak English in school, or is it just another class you take? Why is it you prefer to use English on the forums? Is it just because more people speak English?

[sami1337]

English is international. I doubt most people here are speaking english as native language. I myself certainly am now. For me it just seems like a normal thing to do anyway.

[jorb]

I've picked it up from watching too many episodes of that 70's show....

Our culture has capitulated completely to the anglo-american axis in the culture wars, and it's only a matter of time before our cities start culture flipping (Civ IV reference). But, silliness aside, Swedish culture is permeated with anglo-american influences. English is a mandatory second language from (at least) the fourth grade. In many ways I am extremely grateful for this, although I've come to abhor the inabilities of some people to keep the two languages apart.

Few games would find a stable "market" if they were written in a language spoken by some ten million something odd people world wide. Obviously a major reason for the use of English. If Swedish were an international language of trade, I would not have hesitated to write this game in it. My Swedish is, by leaps and bounds, better than my English.

[kimya]

friend of mines from sweden too and she said that they had english since the 5th grade or something like that, also lots of movies are english, afair.
in many european countries movies are in the original language only with subtitles cause noone bothers to sync them cause os the small market.

/edit
jorbs been faster...

[moonshield]

in many european countries movies are in the original language only with subtitles cause noone bothers to sync them cause os the small market.

/edit
jorbs been faster...

more like in ALL countries except germany and few others...

[zdazzle]

I've picked it up from watching too many episodes of that 70's show....

Our culture has capitulated completely to the anglo-american axis in the culture wars, and it's only a matter of time before our cities start culture flipping (Civ IV reference). But, silliness aside, Swedish culture is permeated with anglo-american influences. English is a mandatory second language from (at least) the fourth grade. In many ways I am extremely grateful for this, although I've come to abhor the inabilities of some people to keep the two languages apart.

Few games would find a stable "market" if they were written in a language spoken by some ten million something odd people world wide. Obviously a major reason for the use of English. If Swedish were an international language of trade, I would not have hesitated to write this game in it. My Swedish is, by leaps and bounds, better than my English.

lol, that 70's show, classic.

I speak English as my native language, only speak part German because of highschool, so if this game was in any other language I'd be missing out on all of it! And so would most of america!!

[kimya]

changing the language now would most likely help a lot of ppl learning another language as noone wants to miss the mapchange

[theTrav]

My Swedish is, by leaps and bounds, better than my English.

That'd be pretty good then as your English is impeccable.

[grantyman]

No, no it is not. Your Swedish can NOT be better than your English. Your English is perfect. It's better than mine, and it's my native language!

[loftar]

I can't speak for Jorb, but please do let me remind you that a "perfect" or "impeccable" language in the sense of being devoid of flaws or outright errors (and even on that level, I know for sure that I, for one, write less than perfectly idiomatic English), is only the beginning of good language; only on top of that can one attempt more exciting constructions and variations. I, for my part, have gotten the vast part of my knowledge of English from reading technical documents of various kinds (programming documentation, manuals, RFCs, &c.), and I'm sure that reflects rather well in my usage of the language. I do know for sure that I don't know a fraction as many idioms or exotic grammatical constructions in English as I do in Swedish. Add to that the inherent advantages in writing rather than speaking, such as being able to go back and revise the text or reflecting on it for a while.

I don't know if I might be sounding elitist, but sometimes the drive to improve oneself can be hard to distinguish from elitism. And, it should be mentioned, linguistics is one of my primary interests apart from programming.