It takes more than a language to unify a nation
Joel S. Berson
Berson at ATT.NET
Fri Feb 23 04:36:42 UTC 2007
At 2/22/2007 09:48 PM, Dennis Baron wrote:
>King's bill also reveals the paranoia
>behind all official language legislation. It privileges the English
>versions of our laws because the bill's sponsors, who surely don't
>object to translating the Bible into English, insist that translating
>our laws, not to mention sacred secular texts like the Star-Spangled
>Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance, will distort or pervert their
>meaning.
The E.U. privileges the language in which the law of a country is
written, as being the most accurate rendition of meaning. Why
shouldn't Americans privilege the English language verions of U.S. laws?
Joel
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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