Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec,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!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
References: <3h3ci5$qc8@agate.berkeley.edu> <elnaD3KB2I.6uv@netcom.com>
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Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 21:37:18 +0000
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In article <elnaD3KB2I.6uv@netcom.com>
           elna@netcom.com "Esperanto League N America" writes:
> >English has the distinction of being the Germanic language with the
> >largest proportion of Romance elements.  On that basis alone it
> >would qualify as the ideal superlanguage for the EU.
> >
> This is a clever argument, but it ignores the obvious political problems
> attached to any national language. Other nations will not allow any nation
> (or tribe, religion, etc) to have this kind of built-in advantage. For 
> top-level political debate to occur only in a language which is native to
> some, but secondary to others, cannot be acceptable.

If you think this, then you must be against any common second
language. Whatever 2nd language is chosen, many children will be brought
up speaking it (perhaps as well as a local language). So it will be a
native language for them.


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