Newsgroups: soc.culture.german,soc.culture.french,alt.politics.ec,soc.culture.europe,sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: talk & travel
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Reply-To: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
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Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 23:26:45 +0000
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In article  <none>  madcro@MCS.COM "Marko Puljic" writes:
> : The number of speakers of Esperanto has not yet sky-rocketed because a veil
> : of ignorance and disinformation still clouds the air of political and 
> : social discourse. Hysterical nay-sayers still capture a wide band-width.
> 
>  I think that by the time you finish translating every document into
> Esperanto, you will have wasted millions of ECUS for a language that
> quite frankly, no one can speak. Add to this, by the time you set
> up programs designed to help spread this "language" it would take
> at least a generation, not to mention the resistance that it might
> face from everyone else.

If the decision was made by a referendum it would be seen to be the will
of the people, so there would be less resistance.

> Indeed there SHOULD be an official
> European language (or at least a couple).

In this debate there have been some stupid statements, but this really
does excel itself! The whole point of having an official language is that
there would be onely *one* language with everyone could standardize on
for international communications.

> But I think that should
> be up to the countries to decide additional language programs.

If you mean, up to the countries to decide what measures they would take
to implement the language, I agree. If you mean that each country would
decide which foreign languages are taught in its schools, I disagree.
 
> I do not want to forget the other languages of Europe! From Breton to
> Sardinian, and Finnish to Portuguese, we should also preserve all
> of the languages that would not have official (as in being the 1 or 5)
> language(s). To steal a French saying:

If the people who speak these languages want to preserve them, they 
should be allowed to do so. Ditto if they do not. Subsidiarity rules.

> VIVE LA DIFFERANCE! (ok it may not be correct French, but I'd rather
>             speak broken French than learn a made-up language...)

You could argue that French is a made-up language (certainly more so
than English), because official bodies try to regulate the language,
by so example banning English words.

-- 
Phil Hunt...philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
Majority rule for Britain!
