The language barrier

I've been watching the football lately, the European Championships, which no nations from the British Isles managed to qualify for, five nations whose combined incompetence means I have no home interest. The Dutch are playing seriously sexy football. It's about time someone was able to legally broadcast these events within Second Life.

So anyway, there I was yesterday, innocently minding my own business when I received an IM from someone asking if they could open a club on my land. "Which land?" I enquired "You TP" came the reply, "Uh oh" thought I, Babbler time!

However Babbler didn't work, so it was the backup plan, Altavista Babelfish. First shock of the day, it's now Yahoo Babelfish, did Yahoo buy Altavista?

So eventually, she TP'd me and the land, well it's a lovely 4096M mainland plot (available at a very reasonable rate, right near the ocean in Sawsnake).

So the first problem, the plot is PG and I won't have clubs on PG land. Explaining PG to the French speaking lovelies who wanted a club for women only was difficult. I don't think, even at the end of the conversation, that they understood what PG meant.

So not only did they want to put a club on PG land, I was also not welcome there! This wasn't going well, so I showed them another plot on a mature sim. This wasn't suitable, it wasn't near enough to the sea. I suggested they tried Sarah Nerd or the Supreme Flock of Land Ninjas to see if they had suitable plots for their venture, they pulled faces at me and tried to use their wily feminine charms upon me, however I'm hardened to the flickering avatar lashes these days and stood my ground.

However, I'd rather be able to understand the French I'm typing, goodness knows what my copy and pastes from babelfish actually sounded like. Which made me wonder whether there are any French classes inworld, although I haven't yet looked. I'd say there may be a market long term for this sort of class, especially as we all mix happily with each other in the one Second Life, one nation approach.

I know from attending Robin Linden's office hour this week that the French aren't happy that their privately run Orientation Island is being shut down. From what I could gather, they run it on an Open Space and they've been told they can't do that. Does anyone know of any other French Orientation Islands? Being an English speaker (well I try my best!) I know that there are plenty of resources available to me, but I hadn't really considered that French or any other language speakers might not have the same resources, of course common sense dictates that they won't have now that I think about but there are a lot of French, German, Spanish and Portugese speakers in Second Life.

So the door is open for me to improve my skill set by learning a foreign language, now I just need to find out where I can do it! It will also help with keywords for search if I'm in the right location.