Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!bt!btnet!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: Esperanto-English
References: <D5r0q4.3E0@indirect.com> <3kskpk$j4m@pilot.njin.net> <796054042snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> <3mev8g$50e@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
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Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 03:16:44 +0000
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In article <3mev8g$50e@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
           etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk "Edmund Grimley-Evans" writes:
> > 2. If Esperanto ever caught on in a big way (>100 million speakers), 
> > quite a lot of people would be brought up speaking it, because their
> > parents would want to give them an advantage.
> 
> But these people - the native speakers of Esperanto - would not
> constitute a nation. They would not have anything like the commonness
> of political interests typical of the speakers of a national language.

They are likely to be disproportunately congregated in a small number of
countries. (The sort of thing I mean is eg if 20% of Europeans can
speak E-o, but only 2% of Asians).

Also, within those countries, they are likely to be better educated and
richer than the avarage - which certainly would give them a commonness
of political interests. As international communication/travel becomes
more common, commonness of political interest will become less correlated
with what country someone comes from, and more correlated with what
job someone does, or what income level they have.
 
-- 
Phil Hunt....philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
