Ravenwood - 11/03/06 07:00 AM
Proving how useless the world body has become, internet "experts" at the United Nations are lamenting the wide-spread use of English on the World Wide Web.
"Some 90 per cent of 6000 languages (at use today) are not represented on the internet," said Yoshinori Imai of NHK, Japan's Broadcasting Corporation.Sniff. Sniff. Why does that last line remind me of that little girl from It's a Wonderful Life? As for language on the net, I'd like to see more Engrish."These people could be left out in the desert of no information and no knowledge," he said.
[...]
"A large part of the population are voiceless because they cannot share the information," said Adama Samassekou, president of the African Academy of Languages in Mali.
"Every time a language dies, a vision of the world disappears," he said
"'Every time a language dies, a vision of the world disappears,' he said"
Would that Communists had their own language, and if it died the visions of communism would die, too.
Posted by: Windy Wilson at November 10, 2006 2:46 PMActually the languages die because they don't say anything people want to say.
Take a language like Gaelic, which has native speakers today. A typical conversation goes something like
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah blah automobile blah blah blah tarmac, blah blah blah blah wrecker blah blah blah tire blah blah blah fender, bonnet blah blah blah.
You know a language is on its way out when a ministry of that language is formed to preserve its use (cf in France).
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