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Proposal: Language Learning

As far as I know, there are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. And since one language can't be learned directly without the help of other, and one can't learn all available languages,

My questions are,

  • We need 2 language tags minimum to indicate the known language, and willing to learn language. So how does the user viewing question on home page knows which language the questioner knows, before opening each and every question?
  • What's the plan of creating all 6.5k language tags? I meant, suppose if we start with 10(or 25 or 50...) popular language tags, and the user(new user or with less reputation) wants to ask a question about a language that doesn't have a tag, they can't create new tags right? So how can we overcome that?

Excited to see it in Beta :)

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    "We need 2 language tags minimum to indicate the known language, and willing to learn language" why? If someone asks " Should Chinese be learned before Japanese or Japanese before Chinese?" (one of the questions from the definition stage), why would anyone need to know whether that person can already speak Spanish or Russian, especially as a tag and not in the question text? I'd tag that with "Japanese", "Chinese", and some kind of "learning-order" tag
    – YviDe
    Jan 17, 2016 at 8:20
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    Anyway, this is something that really needs to grow as the site grows, and decided on the site meta when it exists. Also, no need to create 6.5k tags before any questions about them are asked... Why would there be a plan for that? I guess I don't understand your second question.
    – YviDe
    Jan 17, 2016 at 8:21
  • @YviDe Sorry about that 2nd question, I edited it
    – Snazzy Sanoj
    Jan 17, 2016 at 9:14
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    Hang on to your question until the site is actually launched. I can appreciate your enthusiasm to get started on this site, but it is best to save these site administration questions for the folks who are actively using this site in actual practice. Area 51 is for questions about getting the proposal launched. Sorry about the confusion.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Jan 17, 2016 at 14:52
  • @RobertCartaino Sorry about that. :)
    – Snazzy Sanoj
    Jan 17, 2016 at 15:03
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    If you feel tempted to tag your question for the language you're learning, there's a good chance this is the wrong site for your question.
    – Flimzy
    Mar 2, 2016 at 7:32

1 Answer 1

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We need 2 language tags minimum to indicate the known language, and willing to learn language.

For many questions, I disagree with you. Looking at the questions from the definition phase, for very few the language the person asking already speaks are even relevant. That can be indicated in the question if needed, I see no need for a tag for that.

The way the site is defined, not all questions will even be about a language - it's also about how to learn languages in general.

What's the plan of creating all 6.5k language tags? I meant, suppose if we start with 10(or 25 or 50...) popular language tags, and the user wants to ask a question about a language that doesn't have a tag(new user or with less reputation), they can't create new tags right?

You can't, as far as I know, just create a tag without a question for it anyway, and tags are even deleted if there's only one question with it after some time. So there can be no plan anyway.

It doesn't really matter that much, I think, though. It's basically a question every site on Stackexchange faces and every site somehow deals - if someone wants to ask a question for a programming language that doesn't have a tag yet on StackOverflow, they also face that problem. If you're asking about an obscure TV series on Movies & TV, there will be no tag yet, either.

Usually, there should be at least one other tag that's appropriate, about the subject instead of the language. So "vocabulary" or "grammar" or "resources" or whatever the community decides on. If there isn't, what happens on other SE sites is usually that the question asker just chooses some kind of tag and someone with the appropriate privileges then edits and creates the tag. It's really not that much of a problem.

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