"speak" in profile changed to "you can write in"

Of course. Anything can be discussed. I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t. I’m making an argument that a change does not need to be made.

The only profit of this suggestion for improvement that I see is:
Braille, sign language and flag-alphabeth might be included.

Many postcrossers don’t pay attention at all to the language section. Most cards are written in English. A handfull Germans may write me in Deutsch, but not the majority. Same for the other languages of that I mentioned I speak. Or write not.

And I forget it as well often.

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Ok :smile:
actually, in reality, I don’t want to think like that, that if I offend someone it’s just their problem, because when I do, people see me as arrogant and not thinking of others, but of course I can not forever think of others.

(One of my motto’s is “Joka syyttä suuttuu, se lahjatta leppyy.” → The one who gets angry for no reason, calms down without a gift. :grinning: But of course I don’t want to make anyone angry, offended etc. so if there’s a way to prevent that, and it doesn’t harm me, I choose that.)

You have to consider the act before you beat yourself up over offending someone. If you did not intentionally do something wrong, and acted instead with kindness, and someone unexpectedly gets offended by something that most people would not, then you did nothing wrong and could not have anticipated their reaction. If we walk around worrying all the time that something we do will unintentionally offend someone than we won’t ever do anything. You cannot control another’s response, only your own actions.

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Let me add one (difficult) dimension here…
I like the idea of “you can write in”, because of the following example - I hope it doesn’t cause trouble because the topic is currently sensitive:
A lot of people in Ukraine and Belarus are fluent/bilingual in Russian. I write in Russian to Russian members, for language practice. For people from Ukraine and Belarus, I see what languages they list and where Russian features - if it is the first one listed, I can potentially venture in using Russian. If it is not, I stick to English. I don’t want to offend people who can perfectly read Russian but they don’t consider it their first/main language and might have certain feelings towards it. This has been my practice forever, not since the current “situation” - I guess nowadays it would even be clearer in that I would just safely use Russian with Russians (I guess there are nuances there too, as in other ethniticies who live in Russia, but I guess they are not expecting us to know that much about them).

So in a way, I know I solved my own problem by applying my judgement on what is best to use, and given the current state of things the distinction is now clearer than ever, but “you can write in” would mean that someone might not list a language they are fluent in, but don’t want used for political reasons. There might be other examples out there but this is what I am familiar with.
Of course, these members who have an issue with [language] could just not list it anyway, but it would be more obvious if we said “you can write in”.

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It occurred to me that perhaps a simple “Languages: (list the ones you read)” might work?

Yes, something like that. But so that it’s clear it is for everyone up to them to choose one of these languages.

The situation some members now treat the language part is two things I strongly dislike in normal life as well:
“equal” members, but others have more rights
someone expecting others to know what they want, without telling it

I can’t deal with these thing very well :grin: