> I've always wondered if the difference in tone between French and English that I usually perceive on forums has something to do with French being my mother to

> I've always wondered if the difference in tone between French and English that I usually perceive on forums has something to do with French being my mother tongue. Indeed it usually feels like there's more snarkiness when people speak French I almost added a paragraph to my post about that because when I replied to the aforementioned thread to help the person with his VPS I thought my first draft was.. a bit too snarky :/. I don't know if it's because of the way IT people usually write or if it's inherent to the french language. There's is something to be said about the passive voice that is more predominant in english (or so was I told when learning english). Eg: simple vous avez atteint la limite de certificat gratuit, donc oui vous avez fait le bourrin sachant que la limite est de 5 certificats pour un même domaine et par semaine. vs "Il y a une limite de 5 certificats gratuits par semaine pour un même domaine, donc quand le serveur LE en a délivré 5 il n'en donnera plus avant une semaine". It struck me because "vous avez fait le bourrin" implies the person intentionally behaved like a brute when it's likely his retries that triggered the limit and he was missing the information that there was such a limit. I also suppose he was trying to debug if he could even reach LE for renewal. I know I did that too when I first setup traefik automatic renewal :]. For what it's worth I don't feel the same way at all when talking orally with french IT people. There also might be a 'forum' french culture where being snarky was rewarded. I feel the same vibe on french twitter.