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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
Message-ID: <donhD44FIw.Ezz@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <3ha0n3INNmq5@SUNED.ZOO.CS.YALE.EDU> <3he6ld$jf5@agate.berkeley.edu> <D3uMy4.A6A@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <HINSENK.95Feb13144112@cyclone.ere.umontreal.ca>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 01:44:55 GMT
Lines: 45
Sender: donh@netcom5.netcom.com

hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <HINSENK.95Feb13144112@cyclone.ere.umontreal.ca>:
>In article <D3uMy4.A6A@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>
>   That was back in the Middle Ages, of course, before people had become
>   aware of the advantages of having English as the single official
>   language at international conferences.
>
>I don't think this was ever "realized". What was realized is the advantage
>of having only one language. This hasn't always been English. Before
>the second world war, the international language of physics was
>German, and even Americans had to learn it. That physicists nowadays
>use English is due to political developments, not to any inherent
>advantage of English as a language. And it is precisely in scientific
>conferences that one can easily observe the disadvantage of using
>a national language for international communication.

I have to agree with Ivan that using English as the single official 
language at international conferences does have some advantages. For 
instance, sitting through a twenty-minute presentation by a German 
climatologist reading a prepared paper in a dead monotone gives me 
plenty of time to catch up on my sleep. (Strangely, none of those 
around me seemed to notice my snoring -- possibly because they were 
all leaning back and paying rapt attention to the presenter, with their 
eyes closed to exclude extraneous stimuli.)

Sorry to be late commenting on any postings of interest from yesterday. 
I was at a technical conference about a new video-game platform (ne 
nova por japanaj samideanoj, tamen...). One of those describing it was 
a gentleman from somewhere in southwest Asia. Can't fault his English -- 
his command of grammar was at least as good as mine, and his vocabulary 
was absolutely non-pareil. Unfortunately, he had an unfortunate tendency 
to (a) shift many of his vowels slightly (which is absolutely 
catastrophic in English), (b) swallow the middle syllable in words of 
more than two syllables, and (c) accent the final syllable. If I paid 
as much attention to him as I did to the other (American) presenters, 
I could understand about 75% of what he was saying; if I sat up 
straight and stretched my ears, I could figure out another 15%. Oh, 
well. Such is life.


-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html 
