tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 01 09:17:09 1994
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Re: please pay some respect to lingual minorities
- From: "...Paul" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: please pay some respect to lingual minorities
- Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 12:16:54 -0500
My thought on English being used on the list is this:
The purpose of the list is information dissemination. This can only be done
if we understand each other. I don't know Portugese, and I suspect most
others don't, either. So a post in pure Portugese is not going to help a
lot of people, and defeats the purpose of posting the group.
The divergence of language has been a problem for years. It was the reason
why Esperanto was born. The thing is that the world really needs a "standard
of communication". The problem is that if one language "wins" that honor,
everyone else is going to be pissed. So the trick is to accept whatever
language the most people speak, so as to piss off the fewest people, and so
fewer people have to make the extra effort to learn the language.
That's why English is used; the predominant number of people on this list are
English-speaking, moreso than any other language (except maybe Klingon :).
It's not a racial/political/ethnical statement; it's just the best choice
given the makeup of the mailing list's readers.
...Pual
Hm. Make that
...Paul