Eurotongue

[cbooth at ES.COM]

My apologies to the list for my last posting. I don't post very often, and
apparently I had a bad address last time around. Or maybe my posting only
came back to me garbled.
This is from and article called "Eurotongue," by one Quentin Newark, a
graphic designer, on the potential need for a common language for Europe. I
find the six percent figure for "truly correct comprehension of the English
language" rather surprising.
"But we will need some common way to discuss and describe the things that we
will soon share, including many of the artifacts for which designers are
responsible: packaging, advertising, signage, TV graphics, and official
documents.
"The obvious language, one might think, is English; surely, most Europeans
speak some English already? Not according to one survey (Van der Sandt,
1989), which found that only six percent of the total population had a
'truly correct comprehension of the English language [in Western Europe],'
which 'falls noticeably beneath our most pessimistic expectations.'"
The whole article is at:
http://www.icograda.org/web/home/index.html
Curtis