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L O W L A N D S - L - 02 June 2011 - Volume 01<br><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a></font>
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<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><font size="2">From: </font><span><span style="color:#00681c">Mike Wintzer</span> <span><a href="mailto:k9mw@yahoo.com" target="_blank">k9mw@yahoo.com</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics" 2011.06.01 (08) [EN]</span><span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br></p><div>Paul wrote:</div>
<div>« I fancy Danish for the role. That, or Frisian »</div>
<div>[for the rôle of a European lingua franca].</div>
<div>What about Chemehuevi? Or Njerep?</div>
<div>I am serious. It doesn't really matter </div>
<div>which one. For expediency only it should </div>
<div>be English or Basic English.</div>
Mike Wintzer<br><br>----------<br><br><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><font size="2">From: </font><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color:#5b1094">Paul Finlow-Bates</span> <span class="go"><a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics" 2011.06.01 (10) [EN]</span><span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br></p><div>While I totally disagree with banning of Platt or any language,
surely any citizen of Germany needs to speak German? Even if you don't
actually want to be a citizen of Germany you presumably need to know
what your government and other agencies are actually doing? Many Welsh
people don't want to be citizens of the United Kingdom (and many English
too, including me); many want to speak Welsh if they don't already, but
few would argue against learning English.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>A lot depends on the nature and purpose of the ban; when I worked
in Algeria we had two young people who were keen on improving their
English, so they introduced their own rule to only speak English, even
with each other. They obviously weren't anti-Arabic, it was just a
method of immersion. And it worked; the improvement in 6 months was
spectacular.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The error, made in Wales, Brittany, and apparently Germany, is to
assume that the local language should be actually suppressed or
eliminated.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Paul</div>
<div>Derby</div>
England<br><br>----------<br><br><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><font size="2">From: </font><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color:#790619">M.-L. Lessing</span> <span class="go"><a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de">marless@gmx.de</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics" 2011.06.01 (10) [EN]</span><span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br>
</p>
<div><font size="4">Hello Mike, </font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="4">would not the teacher in your example now tell the children to
speak only lingua franca, because the better they could converse when traveling
or working abroad, while at home it would be just the same...? So it seems to me
that this would not lift up the smaller languages, but drop the "national
languages" of today into the same pit they dropped the minority languages into.
Guess what this would to to them. The only winner would be the lingua franca.
</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="4">Maybe you remember Günther Oettinger saying in 2006 that
English would soon become the "Amts- und Arbeitssprache" in Germany and German
be the language for leisure time and private matters only. The statement then
caused him some trouble. (Now Non-Germans, if you google "oettinger english" and
find some videos, prepare for a good laugh! And YES, it is the same man!!!) Is
this not exactly what you propose? And what has happened to Platt since some
centuries ago? Desirable...?</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="4">Sorry if I do not remember the discussion we had time ago. I
am getting old, I fear -- turned 47 this year :-)</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="4">Hartlich</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="4">Marlou<font size="2"><br><br>----------<br><br></font></font><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><font size="2">From: </font><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color:#00681c">Hellinckx Luc</span> <span class="go"><a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics"</span><span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br>
</p>
Beste Mike,<div><br></div><div><div><div>You wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><div>hello Lowlanders, hello Marlou,</div>
<div>When I entered school at age of five,</div>
<div>the first thing our teacher did was to</div>
<div>forbid the use of Plat (LS). One day</div>
<div>one of our older classmates (I attended</div>
<div>a rural, one-room school) asked the</div>
<div>teacher WHY we couldn't speak Plat.</div>
<div>Her very serious answer was: «You see,</div>
<div>one day you might want to visit Frankfurt</div>
<div>or work in München, and you would be</div>
<div>like a foreigner only speaking Plat.»</div>
<div>A few years later, I made a bike trip</div>
<div>only 100 km from my home town and</div>
<div>the Deutsch forced down my throat</div>
<div>didn't do me any good, because I </div>
<div>didn't know any Danish.......</div>
<div>With a common lingua franca our</div>
<div>teacher's argument would <em>collapse</em>,</div>
<div>no need to deprive us of our mother</div>
<div>tongue for the sake of conversing</div>
<div>with people in Frankfurt or München,</div>
<div>or in Sønderborg for that matter.</div>
<div>Do you understand now, why I feel</div>
<div>that a lingua franca would relieve</div>
<div>the pressure on regional languages?</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Whether
you'll be speaking Platt, Lingua Fränkisch, Englisc, Latin, Spanish or
Chinese, it'll be of little or no use at all if you're heading for
Belarus. Yes, that's further than 100 km from your home town, but these
days, people are more mobile than ever, so it's a valid comparison I
think. </div><div><br></div><div>As the scale on which events take place
increases, old struggles between neighboring languages, or between a
dialect and a Dachsprache will easily be replaced by tension between
newer and bigger blocks of languages. The language, associated with the
most succesfull economy usually wins in the end I think.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind greetings,</div><div><br></div><font color="#888888"><div>Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium<font size="4"><font size="2"><br>
<br>
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">----------</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</span></font></font>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="2">From: </font><span class="gI"><span class="gD">Mike Morgan</span> <span class="go"><a href="mailto:mwmbombay@gmail.com">mwmbombay@gmail.com</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics" 2011.06.01 (07) [EN]</span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
<br><span class="gI"></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Okay, I am not a voting member of the EU (or any OTHER geo-political<br>
entity at last attempt), but I think we in India have shown that<br>
Democracy doesn't work for any important decisions, so maybe geography<br>
should decide.<br>
<br>
With the expanding eastern border of the EU, my guestimate is that<br>
Upper Sorbian (hornjosrebšćina) may be at the (geographical) "heart"<br>
of he EU.<br>
<a href="http://serbscina.w.interia.pl/iso/eindex.htm" target="_blank">http://serbscina.w.interia.pl/iso/eindex.htm</a><br>
<br>
mwm || U C > || mike || мика || माईक || マイク || மாய்க் (aka Dr Michael W<br>
Morgan)<br>
<br>
Senior Consultant<br>
BA in Applied Sign Language Studies (BAASLS)<br>
*इन्दिरा* गांधी राष्ट्रीय मुक्त विश्वविद्यालय | Indira Gandhi National Open<br>
University, New Delhi, India<br>
<br>
"Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we<br>
excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered<br>
dreams of others. ... [T]here is another kind of violence, slower but just<br>
as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the<br>
violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay." (Bobby<br>
Kennedy, 5 April 1968)</p>
</div></font></div></div></div><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</span><br>----------<br><br><font color="#888888">
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="2">From: </font><span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color:#c88900">Hellinckx Luc</span> <span class="go"><a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font size="2">Subject: </font><span class="gI">LL-L "Language politics" 2011.06.01 (07) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</p>
</font>Beste Leeglanders,<div><br></div><div>Fight Alzheimer: Become bilingual!</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB" target="_blank">The Bilingual Advantage - NYTimes.com</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>I wonder what other diseases can be kept at bay, if you're multilingual ;=)</div><div><br></div><div>Kind greetings,</div><div><br></div><font color="#888888"><div>Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium</div>
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