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From: Ben Sauvin <sauvin@csql.mv.com>
Subject: Re: recognisability v. similarity
Message-ID: <3261A291.601B@csql.mv.com>
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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 02:16:49 GMT
References: <843157927snz@vision25.demon.co.uk> <3242348C.9BA@introweb.nl> <533pu9$r8s@oden.abc.se> <844965048snz@vision25.demon.co.uk> <53kcgg$2sl@acmey.gatech.edu> <845104499snz@vision25.demon.co.uk> <badger.845136540@phylo.life.uiuc.edu> <845219211snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>
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Phil Hunt wrote:
> 
> In article <badger.845136540@phylo.life.uiuc.edu>
>            badger@phylo.life.uiuc.edu "Jonathan Badger" writes:
> >phil@vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt) writes:
> >I agree. A conlang IAL will only become popular if a large and influential
> >>organisation pushes for it. The most likely such organisation is the EU.
> >

 (snip!)

  It'd have to be one powerfully convincing organisation, I should
think.

  The United States is the only country I know of not currently using
the metric system officially or on wide scale. The engineering and
manufacturing departments I work or have worked in still think in inches
instead of centimeters, miles instead of kilometers and quarts instead
of liters. Resistance to the metric system is so fierce that I am
sometimes scolded when I cite quantities in "that damn European
gobbledygook system", and many people have told me they'd rather be dead
than have to learn a system that "makes no sense".

  The different between a quart and a liter is a shot. A tiny thing,
really.

  I'm quite sure that loyalty to an existing system, whether it be a
system of measurement, a system of worship OR a system of verbal and
written communication, would meet with similar resistance no matter the
culture, just as I'm quite certain that the US would jump onto the
metric system far faster than it would "some damn gobbledygook European
artificial gibberish". Americans are stubborn; so are Germans and French
people (c'est *moi* qui vous le dis, NETT GEMEINT, Freunde!), and it'd
be difficult to convince me that other nationalities would be much
different on the whole.

  It'd be simple to convince governments of the advantages of some kind
of lingua france (or romana, or germanica, or americana...) besides the
current apparent standard of English, and it might prove easier to
propose a totally artificial language NOT taken from any particular set
of root languages, bypassing potential charges of partisanship of some
kind, but regardless of the language involved, it would still be a
FOREIGN language.

  How would anybody suggest the *people* be convinced to learn and use
such a language?
