It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Chris F Waigl]

James A. Landau wrote:
>
>  About those multi-lingual labels:
>
>  Don't forget that in Canada there is a law (I don't know if it
>  applies to all of Canada or only just to Quebec) that consumer
>  products must have labels in French. Hence any vendor in the United
>  States who wants to sell his products in Canada must add French to
>  the label, whether or not the vendor expects to sell to any
>  significant number of Francophones south of the border.

Um, yes. And if they want to sell in France, Germany, Italy or Sweden
then they must localize their labels for French, German, Italian or
Swedish even though a very large proportion of the population there
actually understands English fairly well.

This is true, at least for mass-market products, independently of
whether or not there are laws mandating that. Only in niche markets
could you expect to be successful in non-English speaking countries with
English-only labels.

Most primary-school age children I know like testing their reading
prowess on the multilingual parts of their favourite cereal boxes.

Chris Waigl

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