Can Someone Explain Facebook/Twitter?

[papaver]

For those involved in counselling for bilingual, multilingual families....some family members can't even read the language of mother tongue or 2nd adopted language. Guess audio clip should work if they can work the technology.

Verbal works..even if horribly imperfect..I can't even understand my mother 40% of the time.

That is sadly a side effect of FB. I speak French fluently but I find it very difficult to write it, so I hardly ever do. So for my French speaking friends I prefer to pick up the phone.

[SadieKate]

Ha! Then there are people like me who can stumble through simple written French but are flummoxed by spoken French.

Yah, I took multiple years of Spanish, German and French throughout my school years and drove my teachers nuts. Aced the written tests and failed the spoken tests. Guess that's why I typeset and proofed in 12 languages for the UC Press. Great visual memory. Horrible sound memory.

[NbyNW]

That is sadly a side effect of FB.

Um . . . I'm pretty sure these kinds of problems existed before FB.

I don't think anyone is saying that FB is the be-all end-all of communication tools, it just happens to bridge a gap in some cases.

I've got friends who post in Chinese, which I can barely read, and one friend who posts in English when he wants to reach his English-speaking friends, and in Norwegian when he is directing updates to his Norwegian community. I don't mind this in the least.

I'm not saying these are the deepest, most substantive or meaningful interactions or anything -- but when opportunities to hang out with dear friends are rare, it's nice to know that they're out there living their lives and doing well. Or if they're not, as others have said above, it's also nice to know if there are ways to lend support even from far away.

Shootingstar - I hope your family is able to figure out a solution to the language barrier. My own family has had to muddle through with similar situations, sometimes you just have to get creative. Good luck!