Language-Based Forums

[Aarmale]

How do the languages of the language-based forums get chosen?
In the thread about populations of coin collectors by country (https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=60060.0)
Now we can see that the top languages (based on country of origin) spoken by coin collectors by using stats from the thread and my website are (with an English speaking bias, not in any order):

• English
• French
• Greek
• German
• Arabic
• Spanish
• Italian
• Bulgarian
• Portuguese
• Hebrew
• Russian

I have highlighted in green all the languages in which there is a forum for.  Has there been thought about making forums for the other languages?

[curtislclay]

Probably no coincidence that the excluded languages in the list all use non-Roman alphabets. That takes them one step further from possible comprehension by the mass of Forvm users whose native tongue is English. Could the Forvm software even handle those alphabets?

[Andrew McCabe]

How do the languages of the language-based forums get chosen?
In the thread about populations of coin collectors by country (https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=60060.0)
Now we can see that the top languages (based on country of origin) spoken by coin collectors by using stats from the thread and my website are (with an English speaking bias, not in any order):

• English
• French
• Greek
• German
• Arabic
• Spanish
• Italian
• Bulgarian
• Portuguese
• Hebrew
• Russian

I have highlighted in green all the languages in which there is a forum for.  Has there been thought about making forums for the other languages?

I suspect it relates to interest from collectors who can speak sufficient English to have joined Forum in the first place - if they've no English they won't be browsing a predominantly English-language website. I also have scanned the source of web-site hits and I get a large number of hits from Russia and some from Russian forums chatting about my site or mentioning coins on it. When I go to the Russian coin forum there's an active group of people who know lots about ancient coins. But if the participants don't have a great deal of English I guess they prefer to stay on their own language chat, based in Russia. NB most major languages have their own native ancient-coin chat-forums, sometimes several (there are multiple forums in Germany, France, Spain, Italy). Still many Italians and Germans choose to join Forum, presumably seeing here a wider group of opinions, and presumably having enough English to make participation here worthwhile. If they didn't have any English I expect they'd stay on a Forum based in Italy, Germany or wherever, as apparently most of the Russian coin aficiandos do.

[Aarmale]

Could the Forvm software even handle those alphabets?

As in the language encoding?

Lets see...
Greek: ελληνικά
Arabic: العربية
Bulgarian: български
Hebrew: עִבְרִית
Russian: язык

[areich]

I don't think there's much science behind it. Look at the German subforum, which always annoys me. It is not used at all, because all German-speaking forum members here also understand English. There would be no point in being here otherwise. It's like the one time we visited a tourist restaurant in Greenwich village and as soon as we had told them we were German they gave us a godawful German menu where we weren't sure what most of the dishes were supposed to be. I might speak with an awful German accent but my English is a hundred times better than their German was.

I think it's more about the site getting a better Google ranking (I think I remember Joe once saying something along those lines) and if you wanted your own subforum to rule with an iron hand  you probably could. The Portugese subforum seems to be pretty new as well.

[Lloyd Taylor]

Has there been thought about making forums for the other languages?

I think that's a question for Joe S.  The FORVM Discussion Board is an adjunct to Joe's primary business of selling coins and supports this primary activity. I suspect the answer to the question lies as much in Joe's marketing strategy and target markets.

By the way, a related question:  what percentage of coins disappear in the mail to Bulgaria and Russia and what are the legal and regulatory impediments to ancient coin collecting in places like Greece? 

Do these aspects make it a viable marketing proposition for a US based vendor?

[Joe Sermarini]

According to SMF (the makers of this discussion forum program) it isn't hard to modify the software to use other scripts BUT it will slow down page rendering.  I am not sure how Aarmale typed those lines of other alphabets but it must not be how the SMF modification does it because we haven't made the modification.  I don't think it would be a good idea to slow down the boards to add any of those other languages.

[Potator II]

I second Andreas.

For what I know people knowing english enough to visit here and being members are OK with the different sections being in english. For the use of french we have our forums and don't feel necessary to repeat what is said otherwise.
That said, it's of some interest as, even if french is not as widely spoken as english, it allows peole from french speaking countries or of strong tradition about french (such as Canada or Poland for example) to link with us.

Potator