[ot]

[Luis M Vicente]

I am not really a patriot, but everybody has to recognize the second
language here in the USA is definitively spanish. Of course a mutant spanish
from the Real Academia de la Lengua overseas, but spanish at least. Just go
to NY, Chicago, LA, Miami and you will realize what I am saying here.

No pun though!!! I always speak english... but when I am with my Puerto
Rican girlfriend ;-)

Anyway when this [ot] was started??

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-music-dsp at shoko.calarts.edu
[mailto:owner-music-dsp at shoko.calarts.edu]On Behalf Of 17.hzV.tRL.478
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 7:46 AM
To: music-dsp at shoko.calarts.edu
Subject: [ot]


>One thing to consider in evaluating English's strength as the "incumbent"
>is that it hasn't been in that role forever.  Latin, German, and French
>have preceded English as international languages of choice.

German???  Still popular in central and even eastern Europe, but I don't
think it was ever as international as Latin or French.

 To figure out
>what would be needed to cause English to be displaced by an IAL, you first
>need to know why English will be displaced by anything.
>Then figure out if any of the things that have happened can and will happen
>to English, and if you really favor an IAL, what you can do to help those
>factors come into play.


>We can sit here and assume that at some point English is going to decline
just as Latin and French did. It almost certainly will -- and that decline
will follow a very, very painful period that will obviously not leave the
English-speaking countries unaffected. But expecting this to happen and
_helping_ it happen are two quite different things.

When the US economy declines due to mismanagement and other factors which
there is insufficient space to describe here, the US military power will
decline.  I think English will decline quickly then.  What else does it have
to commend it but money and guns? It has neither the cultural prestige of
French nor the religious authority of medieval Latin.  Yes, English is
doomed.  But will  it have a single replacement, or several regional
contenders for its former position?

>So who wants to get in
there and help those factors come into play?

I, for one, will be glad to see America get out of the empire business, even
if it does so unwillingly.  But I don't think there is much any one person
can do to hasten it.  It will happen soon enough, probably within a century,
certainly within two.  ~alypius



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FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links
http://shoko.calarts.edu/musicdsp/