6 ms·

Why are the posts there in English?

meepmorp 4y ago
Because there's a significant Iranian diaspora, and many of the younger people don't speak/write Farsi but everybody speaks English to some degree?
- msm_ 4y ago
  > everybody speaks English to some degree That's not even true in my European country, I'm pretty sure at most 50% of Iranians speak English (not even taking into account that to write comfortably you need B2 or better English proficiency). Any kind of English-only media is automatically ignored by 90% of my countrymates, because most people prefer their native tongue.
  - cafard 4y ago
    Doesn't the list of cities with the most Iranians start 1) Tehran, 2) Los Angeles?
  - lallysingh 4y ago
    What language is a better choice?
    - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      Farsi? To flip it around a bit, imagine a Russian majority telegram channel dedicated to the upcoming American civil war. What would you think about that? Well, how is an English majority subreddit any different?
      - rhaway84773 4y ago
        What language do you think South Asian diaspora communicate in? The internet/computers were never designed for Farsi. And the situation was way worse for phones before smartphones. It’s only recently that efforts have been made to make it possible to communicate via Farsi, Arabic, or South Asian languages. But it’s still extremely hard. Russia has a significant Russian only computer development program, so communicating over devices via Russian is more common. East Asian languages have spent a lot more time/energy finding ways to communicate via their own languages, and even there, the most popular text communication language is one which uses English characters. Also, English is spoken far less than in a country like Iran, which has a highly educated populace, that until very recently was very integrated with the English speaking world. Communicating in English is absolutely obvious for such a diaspora.
      - justinclift 4y ago
        Are you maybe accidentally White Knight-ing here? eg getting upset on someone else's behalf, for something that doesn't actually bother them
        MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
        I don't have any involvement or personal connections. It just looks weird? Honestly, I want it to be true, but I'm also old enough to remember the whole twitter revolution that was totally going to happen a decade ago but didn't. In that subreddit, what is the proportion of westerners to Iranians? I have no idea, but the one signal I have is that the posts are majority English. Which is depressing. It's like when there's a local election and reddit is a huge echo-chamber that's 100% convinced their chosen candidate will win, who subsequently gets crushed. Is this any different?
yucky 4y ago
The real answer is likely because it's performative bs for an American audience.

Because there's a significant Iranian diaspora, and many of the younger people don't speak/write Farsi but everybody speaks English to some degree?

msm_ 4y ago
> everybody speaks English to some degree That's not even true in my European country, I'm pretty sure at most 50% of Iranians speak English (not even taking into account that to write comfortably you need B2 or better English proficiency). Any kind of English-only media is automatically ignored by 90% of my countrymates, because most people prefer their native tongue.
- cafard 4y ago
  Doesn't the list of cities with the most Iranians start 1) Tehran, 2) Los Angeles?
- lallysingh 4y ago
  What language is a better choice?
  - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    Farsi? To flip it around a bit, imagine a Russian majority telegram channel dedicated to the upcoming American civil war. What would you think about that? Well, how is an English majority subreddit any different?
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      What language do you think South Asian diaspora communicate in? The internet/computers were never designed for Farsi. And the situation was way worse for phones before smartphones. It’s only recently that efforts have been made to make it possible to communicate via Farsi, Arabic, or South Asian languages. But it’s still extremely hard. Russia has a significant Russian only computer development program, so communicating over devices via Russian is more common. East Asian languages have spent a lot more time/energy finding ways to communicate via their own languages, and even there, the most popular text communication language is one which uses English characters. Also, English is spoken far less than in a country like Iran, which has a highly educated populace, that until very recently was very integrated with the English speaking world. Communicating in English is absolutely obvious for such a diaspora.
    - justinclift 4y ago
      Are you maybe accidentally White Knight-ing here? eg getting upset on someone else's behalf, for something that doesn't actually bother them
      - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
        I don't have any involvement or personal connections. It just looks weird? Honestly, I want it to be true, but I'm also old enough to remember the whole twitter revolution that was totally going to happen a decade ago but didn't. In that subreddit, what is the proportion of westerners to Iranians? I have no idea, but the one signal I have is that the posts are majority English. Which is depressing. It's like when there's a local election and reddit is a huge echo-chamber that's 100% convinced their chosen candidate will win, who subsequently gets crushed. Is this any different?

yucky 4y ago

The real answer is likely because it's performative bs for an American audience.