Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!kdr From: kdr@doc.ic.ac.uk (K D Rigotti) Newsgroups: comp.society.development Subject: Re: The languages of the net. (was Re: Mailing list for networks in Latin America) Message-ID: Date: 6 Jun 91 19:41:53 GMT References: <1991May28.172900.11325@dsd.es.com> <1991May29.095807.17756@uwasa.fi> <1991May30.193217.3017@uwasa.fi> Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, London. Lines: 32 Nntp-Posting-Host: dirty.doc.ic.ac.uk In-Reply-To: ts@uwasa.fi's message of 30 May 91 19:32:17 GMT In article <1991May30.193217.3017@uwasa.fi> ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) writes: Sidetracking from the original subject slightly, I feel that English has become so widespread (also a bit thanks to computer nets) that the English have no special license to it any more. Those days are long gone, at least since the Second World War. To me the English, Americans etc just happen to speak English as their native language, and that's all there is to it. No awe, no divine aura attached. Very true, if anything the average Briton knows less about his first language than many who learn it as a second. It's quite embarrassing to talk to a foreign student and find that he has a better vocabulary than you do :-) To get back to the point of the thread ... If we don't keep an eye on its development it is possible that we will finish up with a ``Netspeak'' that just doesn't have the expressive power of *any* of the constituent languages --- rather it would be a pidgin everything. This would be a sad loss to all of us. The net represents a golden opportunity to return to the days of a single language for all research and advanced thinking (pity latin was so awkward), so lets not cripple it from the start. When a group of people go out for a chinese meal you don't all buy separate dishes and just eat your own, you buy a good selection and take bits from all of them. Building a language (and whether you realise it or not that *is* what is happening here) should follow the same principles. Kevin ----------------------------------------------------------------- "but of course you want a kettle that makes toast, its progress!"