[donquichotte]

I wonder why they chose Portugese. Unfortunately, I can't read the blog post. The map seems to indicate that the number of speakers is important, but that can't be it, there's many more Mandarin/Hindi/Arabic speakers. Does anybody have information on this?

[rglullis]

It's a mix of market demand and potential. China has all the clones, so Mandarin-speaking people already have their Q/A equivalent.

India (mostly) speaks english at a level that allows them to participate in the "original" Stackoverflow.

Arabic? As much as there is a big population, I would venture that there is not enough demand.

Brazil, OTOH, is a reasonably industrialized country with some industries that are quite advanced: Genomics and Banking come to mind. It has the 3rd or 4th largest telecommunications infrastructure in the world. Put that together with the fact they can't speak English that well and you have a big under-served audience.

Though the cynic in me thinks that this is just a way to contain the pesky Brazilians, who are known for not being exactly civil in online communities. By letting the less educated Brazilians have their own yard, they won't do as much damage to the main property.

Ps: shout out to Gabriel (Gabe). He worked with us for a year or so and it was a pleasure to have him on the team. Great guy, super smart and zero ego.

[marcosdumay]

Is Arabic even a single language? (I really don't know.)

But I don't think it's in the SO best interest to contain any group. They already have a moderation system for dealing with anoying people. I'd put that cinic at rest.

What this will achieve is making learning to program much easier for portugueese speaking people. A much needed thing. But I doubt that anybody will stop searching problems in english, just the sheer number and selection bias are enough to keep the best content in english.

Anyway, great icon. Stack Overflow with cedilha!

[mchaver]

Written Arabic can be considered one language. Spoken varieties are not mutually intelligible and do not generally have standardized written forms, though many Arabic speakers can understand Egyptian Arabic do to popularity of their media.

[friendzis]

This is appalling, but sometimes in my work I can better express myself in English than in my mother tongue. It's not because there is much more material in English, but because there is so much high quality material in English. With this we are basically encouraging removal of high quality material from the web. Remeber: the internets are english and there are no girls on the internet :D

[ionforce]

How is this a removal of content?

[friendzis]

In a sense that content creation capacity is limited. Especially quality content. Driving some creators (and consequently content) to private zones of internets make that content inaccessible which is indistinguishable from removal

[tbastos]

LOL as a Brazilian, that was my first thought too! The most skilled developers will continue to use the global SO and only the "pesky" will move to the new site. The only real drawback is for the youth who doesn't speak english well yet, and now has one more incentive to never really learn it.

[bederoso]

Exactly what I thought as well, [as a Brazilian myself] I predict this PT-SO will be filled with "easy" questions easily answered by a search, and should have a very low level of actual good content. I'm not pulling this out of nowhere, I tried participating in multiple Brazilian programming communities, but it's always the same beginner-level-you-could-have-figured-it-out-yourself type of questions.

As for the youth that doesn't speak English well yet, I suppose they could see the low quality that this PT-SO would be as an incentive to actually start learning it :-)

[lgama]

Prediction fulfilled so far.

[tricolon]

What about French or Spanish?

[rglullis]

They would be good candidates. But look at the numbers of Internet usage in Brazil. It makes perfect sense to have Portuguese as the first. It doesn't mean that it will be the only one.

[reubenmorais]

Wait, I don't think they explicitly chose Portuguese. My understanding is that it was proposed [0] by the community and things worked from there (ie. this announcement is only about SO admins making it official and moving the site out of beta).

[0] https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/23539/stack-overf...

[xr09]

Por que começar com português? Queríamos começar com uma comunidade que atendesse a dois requisitos:

Um grande número de desenvolvedores talentosos, em que Grande parte deles se sentisse muito mais confortável em falar sua própria língua do que o inglês

Why start with portugese?

We wanted to begin with a community that fulfilled two requisites:

Having a large number of talented developers and many of them feeling much more comfortable speaking their own language than English.

It seems to me this is a move to catch Brazilian developers, a wise move I'd say.

[nmc]

Good point: Mandarin is clearly more spoken, and further from English, than Portuguese.

About Hindi: keep in mind that English is still an official Indian language, especially since the English Language Amendment Bill.

About Arabic: there are several kinds of Arabic, and not all are mutually intelligible. As a result, the number of people speaking it is a controversial figure... you can then compare the 200 million of native Portuguese speakers with the 280 million of native Modern Standard Arabic speakers.

[oscargrouch]

>Por que começar com português?

>[Nota do tradutor: Porque português é a melhor língua, o Brasil é o melhor país e o Jay não consegue ler o que a gente escreve ;)]

>Queríamos começar com uma comunidade que atendesse a dois requisitos:

>Um grande número de desenvolvedores talentosos, em que Grande parte deles se sentisse muito mais confortável em falar sua própria língua do que o inglês

>Então a escolha foi muito simples. O Brasil conta com uma das maiores e mais fortes comunidades de programação do mundo, e isso sem contar Portugal, Moçambique, Angola e outros países menores que acrescentam ainda mais desenvolvedores talentos a esse grupo.

Why start with portuguese?

We wanted to start a community that met two goals:

A big number of talented developers that did feel much more confortable to speak in its own native language than in english.

Then the choise was pretty simple. Brazil have one of the stronger and vibrant programmer communities in the world, and lets not forget about Portugal, Moçambique(how is this spelled in english?) and Angola that adds even more to the talented pool of developers in this group

[oscargrouch]

Let me also add that this is a cultural thing:

I dont know if its because the country is so big.. but culturally people dont care enough for english.. its something everybody wants to know about, of course .. but only the kids of the rich people that can pay for extensive english private class in expensive courses can handle it.. also they create couses with years (2 to 4) long courses.. so they end to be very expensive.. so its something that get in the end of the list of needs..

For instance, i am lucky, cause i learned it from movies when i was teenager, with subtitles on it.. it just happen naturally.. and also.. i needed to go further, as i work with technology.. and yeah.. the good things are in english.. so reading just completed the understanding of it..

but i see a ton of people here(in Brazil), (VERY GOOD hackers) that wont touch this world, because its in english.. Brazillian communitites always have a life on its own.. with its own culture.. like a little bubble .. (remember the Orkut phenomenon?)

Thats why Brazil is such a good opportunity for underdogs.. it doesnt follow too much the political fashion/tendency of the world.. Brazil has a move on its own.. you need to be here enough time to feel it.. and its vibrant..alive..

But its also not isolated.. its has much more in common with US than most of the people think.. with a destiny on its own

[outworlder]

> also they create couses with years (2 to 4) long courses

This seems to be a newer trend. The courses used to be much longer than that, to the order of 8 to 10 years.

Yeah, you read that right. Unless you took shortcuts (I had placement tests every once a while which let me skip several years), you'd spend a decade 'learning' English.

They were either creating the curriculum for the lowest common denominator, or the courses were a scam.

My brother skipped all the nonsense and learned enough English to have meaning conversations at age 8, playing Ultima Online. Then a couple of semesters after that helped with the vocabulary and pronunciation.

That, and movies, and setting the operating system to English, after some nagging on my part.

[sangnoir]

Here's a Google Translate link: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...