About forcing a language on someone

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>edsel at glo.be wrote:

>Changing the language of a whole population - not just the upper class that
>can be enticed easily - seems to necessitate hurtful interventions. Maybe we
>should be more aware of that when thinking of the spread of PIE e.g.

-- people learn languages because they're useful.  In most contexts, there
seems to be fairly limited emotional investment in them -- modern linguistic
nationalism being an exception, of course.

Even there, it's mostly political militants and bureaucrats who agitate such
matters.  Eg., the continuing inexorable decline of Gaelic in Ireland has
been completely unaffected by political intervention since the emergence of
the Irish Free State, with its policy of promoting Gaelic by all possible
means.

Ordinary people seem to switch languages when circumstances make such change
(a) possible and (b) a useful means of 'getting ahead'.