# For East Slavic Languages forum, not only Russian



## Kolan

A recent split of the Slavic forum already generated a few reasonable questions and doubts, besides a controversial and poorly justified "Russian-English" name.

As of my point of view, I regret to see now Ukrainian and Belorussian orphaned within Other Slavic Languages. 

Another concern: should a Russian-Ukrainian-Belorussian speaking moderator be appointed for the corresponding East Slavic Languages forum?


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## Etcetera

Hi Kolan.

As the majority of posts concerning Russian were in English, I wasn't surprised to see a _Russian-English _(although I do wonder where would threads opened by our Italian and Spanich friends go). 

Jana told us she's going to post an announcement regarding the new forum soon, so I'd suggest to wait till the announcement, and then ask Jana our questions (if we have any after reading the announcement ). 

As for appointing a new moderator - I think the said Jana performs her functions, both as a forera and as a moderator, brilliantly.


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## Outsider

Etcetera said:


> As the majority of posts concerning Russian were in English, I wasn't surprised to see a _Russian-English _(although I do wonder where would threads opened by our Italian and Spanich friends go).


Until now, when there existed an English-X forum and a question about language X was asked in another language, the thread was moved to Other Languages. I've seen this many times with French-Italian questions, for example.

But I guess this is a new situation, because in the case of a non-English question about Russian the thread might also be moved to "Other Slavic"...

I'm sure the moderators are thinking these subtleties through.


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## Nanon

Many of the threads of the Slavic forums (now in plural) start in English, maybe because posters are not sure their messages will reach a significant number of readers on time if they use another language (Slavic or not).

Out, it is true that there is no place in the French and Italian subforums for that specific pair, but there is another example that you most probably know . The Portuguese forum is "To/From English and any other languages" (any except Spanish, which has a separate subforum). The German forum also does except for "Deutsch - Español", etc...

Maybe having the Russian (East Slavic?) forum following this model is not an ideal solution, but maybe it will anyway. As Etcetera said, Jana's future announcement should clarify this.


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## Kolan

Nanon said:


> Many of the threads of the Slavic forums (now in plural) start in English, maybe because posters are not sure their messages will reach a significant number of readers on time if they use another language (Slavic or not).


Apparently, we cannot handle _all_ other languages, but, based on the past experience, it is OK to ask questions and get answers in French, Spanish, Italian, German.

So why not to change it to "Russian (or East Slavic Languages) - English, French, Spanish, Italian, German" ?


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## Nanon

Kolan, this is what happens _de facto_ in the other forums I mentioned. Frankly, I haven't seen any Portuguese-Swedish post yet (but maybe I should check Nordic languages before confirming!...)

However, IMHO, there should be a compromise between specificity of subforums, legibility, and flexibility. Plus, I think we can handle a wider array than what actually appears in our posts, but many of us use English as "the most acceptable, only applicable solution" (... "un pis-aller"). Shouldn't we see if we can handle these requests before deciding that we can't?...


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## Kolan

Nanon said:


> many of us use English as "the most acceptable, only applicable solution" (... "un pis-aller"). Shouldn't we see if we can handle these requests before deciding that we can't?...


Using English between French and Russian never helps, only complicates the matter. I noticed that some people post questions in English just because they are unaware of other languages available in Russian forum.


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## Lemminkäinen

As it has been announced that there will be an announcement posted soon, I'm locking this thread. Hopefully this announcement will clarify and answer some questions regarding this new forum.


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