[elangoc]

I've had people ask me, "Why don't we get everyone to speak just one language? That would make everything easier."

That ignores a lot about the cultural meanings embedded in language and the human tendency to use language to encode identity.

And on a very practical point, not everyone has access to learning English. Wealth & wealth distribution matter. How close your native language is to English also matters (is it Germanic? Indo-European? does it use a Roman script? is it alphabetic?...)

[Eridrus]

I think this project is great, and it seems like a great teaching tool.

But maintaining your own separate language, computer or otherwise, imposes a cost, it's not clear why the cost of that choice should be shouldered by the rest of the world.

In general, I think having separate languages divides the world and they are a net negative, despite their role in local culture we shouldn't be trying to keep them all around.

The choice of English as the current lingua franca of the world isn't really fair (nor certain), but there is no choice that is fair to everyone, and English seems to have significant adoption already.

[newjersey]

It is interesting how the same companies that complain how nation states are forcing Balkanization of the Internet (by propping up local rivals to SV efforts) are the same people who are doing their own Balkanization in the name of easy and quick growth.

I'd think a programming language is the last place you'd need i18n and l10n. I know documentation isn't sexy but that's where we should focus our efforts. I assume Google translate and tools like that will get us maybe 80% there but there is still a lot of work involved.

All in all, looking at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/echeran/clj-thamil/master/... I am cautiously supportive of the effort but we should still strive to maintain uniformity where possible.