BlackOtaku:Ĉu ĉiuj ni ne povas progresi?

Heh, I think kunakordi would be a suitable word.

targanook:The problem is the language barrier, which many Americans seem not to see.

Sure, some Americans believe in other languages the way atheists believe in gods. But no one here is like that, even the Americans of us; we're all multilingual to some extent, and I believe we're above extolling one national language as superior to all others. Which leads to...

qwertz:"Peace"

Aw yeah.

(Redacted heavily due to embarrassment)

we can switch this conversation to Esperanto, do ni povas trovi ke eĉ esperanto estas lingvo kiu kaŭzas militojn

Other than that though, I feel the relevance has nothing to do with English anymnore, but languages in general.

ceigered:Awkward sentence? Dude, there isn't much left to the imagination if you say that in ANY language. "Relax, I am (ethnic group A), not (ethnic group B)" MEANS that ethnic group B is something that prevents people from relaxing. Ergo bad. That said, if were that sort of joke I still wouldn't mind - in Australia, everyone is worthy of being insulted, including ourselves - "leave no man behind (in the insultation)"

You must excuse targanook. He is just young I think (from what I see in his profile he is just over 18 years old) so what he says doesn't mean the way we, Poles, think of the Arab people. I am teacher myself and I know that pupils sometimes say very stupid things. I think the same is all over the world, not just in Poland. So whatever he wrote, it was stupid, he didn't know what he had wanted to say, don't make an affair...

That's why I wrote this:

paulopolo:The age of interlocutor always matters?

geo63:don't make an affair...

I agree.
Targanook didn't want to offend anyone. As almost every esperantist he's very tolerant person.

Thanks Geo for that grounding comment, I apologise for contributing to what could be called an overwhelming response to something misunderstood.

(Redacted heavily due to further embarrassment)

ceigered:Anyway, I think it's brought up an interesting issue - if I had heard a native speaker say the same thing, I wouldn't have paid attention to it, and maybe chuckled, but because it was a non-native speaker the comment was much more visible to me. I wonder why - perhaps native speakers of languages think that comments made by foreigners that are already "risky" in the language must be mistakes rather than having a level headed assessment of the situation.

Oh come on Ceigered, why are you trying to stretch this as much as possible?! Just leave it.

It's nothing to do with whether it was a native or non-native speaker. Everybody has to be careful how they put things regardless of the language they might be using.

Going by the last few comments by the other Polish people in this thread, they clearly understand this.

As Paulopolo and Geo63 say, let's not make a big fuss in reaction to the badly thought out comments of a teenager!

Chainy:Oh come on Ceigered, why are you trying to stretch this as much as possible?! Just leave it.

I feel bad not trying to slowly move the conversation away from where things got messy, thus I attempted to introduce a sub-issue for discussion, while keeping on the general theme of both the messy situation and the discussion about global English and difficulties of internationally spoken languages.

ceigered:

Chainy:Oh come on Ceigered, why are you trying to stretch this as much as possible?! Just leave it.

I feel bad not trying to slowly move the conversation away from where things got messy, thus I attempted to introduce a sub-issue for discussion, while keeping on the general theme of both the messy situation and the discussion about global English and difficulties of internationally spoken languages.

Oh, pft. Your posts were just fine. Don't worry, the thread already reached its low point; we can only go up from here, really.

Misunderstandings happen even with a man/woman living next door - when it comes to international level, they (misunderstandings) are sure to appear. People live in different cultures and have their own customs, ways of thinking and understanding the world around them. We are all humans but not the same. So internationally we must be extra tolerant.

ceigered:

Chainy:Oh come on Ceigered, why are you trying to stretch this as much as possible?! Just leave it.

I feel bad not trying to slowly move the conversation away from where things got messy, thus I attempted to introduce a sub-issue for discussion, while keeping on the general theme of both the messy situation and the discussion about global English and difficulties of internationally spoken languages.

Fair enough, but your way of introducing this new discussion topic was rather strange. You make the controversial statement that you could ignore certain things if a native speaker said something offensive, but you wouldn't afford a non-native speaker such a luxury. Do you seriously mean that? Did you think that over at all before you wrote it?!

This is what your statement was:

ceigered:
Anyway, I think it's brought up an interesting issue - if I had heard a native speaker say the same thing, I wouldn't have paid attention to it, and maybe chuckled, but because it was a non-native speaker the comment was much more visible to me. I wonder why - perhaps native speakers of languages think that comments made by foreigners that are already "risky" in the language must be mistakes rather than having a level headed assessment of the situation.

Chuckled? About what? The comment about not being an Arab? Are you serious?

Your post annoyed me as everyone was falling over themselves to try and cool things off in this thread - and then you go and bung in a senseless statement like that!

In this case, the person used the word 'Arab' and there's no way this is due to some kind of difficulty in using English - after all, the word is the same in Polish!