I understand your point. And I'll grant you that if I walked into a local cardroom in xyz-istan, I'd expect they wouldn't be speaking English and I would not play there. And, as I've never played poker in a casino or cardroom outside the US, I'll even grant that other countries will possibly have rules for table speak. However, in the US, the B&M
casinos will enforce English only at the table (some of them do it proactively, some reactively, but it is done). I actually got to see it happen one time, not a big deal really, but it did happen.
As for online, which is the most relevant to this discussion I checked out what I believe are two of the largest online sites...
1.
pokerstars is very clear about non-English chat:
Non-English chat: We are aware that our players are from around the world, and that for many of them English is not their first language. However, at this time our policy is that English is the only language allowed to be used in PokerStars chat.
In fact, they are so clear about this that they publish the same text in eleven languages.
2. Ultimate Bet says:
Players conducting chats that are deemed inappropriate or abusive may have chat privileges revoked temporarily or permanently. This behavior includes:
• Chatting in any language other than English during game play (trivial exceptions will be made).
So your thought about moderators controlling what goes on will likely be limited to only very small, low traffic, or independent sites.
But I guess after typing this long response it no longer matters to me as I can't play there anyway.
(but I figured I'd post it anyway since I took the time to look it up.)
