About forcing a language on someone

[Jon Patrick]

JoatSimeon at aol.com    said

    -- 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.

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

This is a very simplistic picture that belies the complexities of many
situations. For example in the Basque Country. The language was in retreat for
40 years with oppression from the franco regime where people were beaten for
using it, and now is in advance as a popular movement that is also supported
by basque government policies. Neither scenarios fit your picture.

Jon
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Prof. Jon Patrick			BH +61-2-9351 3524
Sybase Chair of Information Systems	FX +61-2-9351 3838
Basser Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sydney
Sydney, 2006	
NSW
Australia	    WEB: http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jonpat
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