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Old 08-19-2004, 05:28 PM   #7
Molly
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
Molly will become famous soon enoughMolly will become famous soon enough
This is a rather interesting topic, and not just for Roleplay Muds. In a strict RPI there is even a relatively simple solution to it: the person with the bad English skills could assume the role of a child, an animal (if those exist as race choices), of one of the less verbal races like trolls, or - if they care a lot about their dignity – a traveller from some remote place, who is not yet familiar with the lingo of the country. A tactful OOC suggestion from the Admin in that direction could probably solve a few problems. Not all would follow the hint, but if they don’t it will be their own fault, not yours for not trying.

A bit more difficult to handle are the more OOC problems, that occur in all muds, not just in RPIs. People who don’t have English as their first language definitely are handicapped. Not so much in the playing the game, even though it may slow them down a bit, at least in the beginning. But they can use dictionaries to check any words in the descriptions that they don’t understand, and they soon pick up. (This is one way that a good mud can actually be educational, the players learn some better English from it. On the other hand a badly written mud with tons of typos is detrimental, but hopefully there are not too many of those around).

The real problems are socially, in the swift flow of conversation, because there is no time to check in a dictionary then, you have to go with what you have got. A mud is a very social place, and player relations are extremely important for the pleasure - or pain - you get out of mudding. Bad language skills can lead to severe misunderstandings, which in some cases can poison a relation forever, if they don’t get cleared out. Players with bad English can appear to be very childish or very stupid, (which they probably aren’t, since they have managed to find their way into something as ‘off-the-mainstream’ as a mud, but the average player doesn’t see any further than the obvious). They also often get mocked and ridiculed by other players, and that can lead to resentment and retaliation.

I am Swedish myself, so I have firsthand experiences both from the view of the player and the Administrator. I will probably never forget the time when I, as a total mudding newbie in my very first mud, accidentally typed ‘Buy Lance’ instead of ‘Bye Lance’ and got the response ‘I am not for sale, Molly’. I managed to turn it into a joke, but the memory still makes me blush.
Many years later, now as Imp, one of our East European players told me ‘I know that you disgust me’. Not the wisest thing to say to an Imp, you may agree, and I admit I raised an eyebrow at first. However it turned out that what he really meant to say was something like ‘I know that you despise me’ or more simply put ‘I know that you dislike me’. A kid would probably have said, ‘I know you hate me’ and the misunderstanding would never have occurred.

This brings us to a second common problem; when the non-English-major tries to use ‘big’ words that he doesn’t quite understand. This usually occurs with more mature, more intelligent and more educated players, and paradoxically enough those are the ones that usually get into the most social and disciplinary problems, especially if there are cultural differences or lacking social skills on top of the language deficiencies. A person, who is used to being treated with respect and courtesy in their own environment, usually responds very badly to being ridiculed and/or treated like a retarded kid.

If you had a chance to check out the age of the worst Troublemakers in your mud, I think you’d be amazed over how many of them are 20+ and quite intelligent. That’s why I usually try to talk things over in a calm way with our own Troublemakers, rather than just bashing or banning them. It doesn’t always work, but surprisingly often it does.

A third problem is that even a person with comparatively good English, still may have difficulties with idiomatic expression and the ‘value’ of certain words. Non-native English persons may write grammatically correct, but often become a bit circumstantial and longwinded in their effort to express things clearly. This can in turn make them seem a bit stuffy or even unintentionally arrogant, which offends some people. (I’ve been told that I often come out as that myself).

In our mud we have several players from the former Soviet Union countries. They are all very skilled with computers - (it seems almost all people from that hemisphere are) – and consequently they picked up the game mechanics very fast, and are very successful as players, if you simply define success by strength and power and most pkills. But almost all of them have encountered very serious problems socially. It all started with some player mocking them, and escalated to a spiral of revenge and retaliation which for a while rocked the entire mud. Things have calmed down now, mainly because their English has improved considerably, but some players will never forgive or forget some events from the past.

I don’t think there are any easy solutions to the language problems. The best thing you can do is to urge your players to show some tolerance. In our mud we have a rule -–(one of very few) – that any derogatory expressions based on a person’s gender, race, religion, nationality and sexual habits are forbidden on all channels. Maybe I should add some rule about not giving a person a hard time about their language skills. Especially since we have an amazingly large percent of non-English players. Maybe all muds have, now that the net is getting more and more global.
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