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From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
Newsgroups: comp.society.development
Subject: Re: The languages of the net. (was Re: Mailing list for networks in Latin America)
Message-ID: <1991May29.095807.17756@uwasa.fi>
Date: 29 May 91 09:58:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: uwasa.1991May29.095807.17756
References: <4448@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <1991May28.172900.11325@dsd.es.com>
Organization: University of Vaasa, Finland
Lines: 29

In article <1991May28.172900.11325@dsd.es.com> bpendlet@dsd.es.com writes:
>In article <4448@aipna.ed.ac.uk>, reiter@aifh.ed.ac.uk writes:
:
>I've had some form of network access for most of the last 10 years. In
>all that time I've only seen a handful of articles in a language other
>than English. Considering the number of countries on the net it seems
>odd to me that I only see English in the news groups.
>
>Is English used for posting local news in non-English speaking
>countries? Or is Engish only used when posting news with World
>distribution?  Does the dominance of English on the net hurt the nets
>acceptance in the world?
:

   I think that the answer to this issue is simple.  For _practical_
reasons we need a common language to communicate in a global
network, and we have only one such laguage. 
   Local news are posted (at least in the European countries I know)
in local language(s), with ocasional English on the side.
   Now why should the dominance of the common language, which we all
more or less understand, be adverse to the nets acceptance.  What a
better way to form a gloabal community and bring down local
isolation and xenophobia. 

...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous ftp archives 128.214.12.37
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun