From CREOLIST ('99): Posting in English or not?

[Dave Robertson]

Date:         Sun, 14 Feb 1999 15:55:21 +0100
 Reply-To:     CreoLIST at ling.su.se
 Sender:       The CreoLIST Mailing List <CREOLIST at ling.su.se>
 From:         CreoLIST <CreoLIST at ling.su.se>
 Subject:      *** Note from the list owners - kindly read ***
 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii

 Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 15:52:35 +0100
 From: Jens Edlund <jens at ling.su.se>
 Subject: *** Note from the list owners - kindly read ***

 In view of some recent and not-so-recent CreoLIST postings, we'd feel
 obliged to clarify the editorial policy of the list.

 The welcome message that you all received when subscribing to this list
 explicitly states that contributions are welcome in _any language_ -- it
 is all up to you whether you want to be understood by the other list
 subscribers or not. The existence of Anglo-Saxon linguistic imperialism
 is
 a fact, but so is the status of English as the world's major lingua
 franca, and the only language understood by all CreoLIST subscribers.
 You
 may use languages other than English on the list, but only English and a
 few other major Western European languages such as French, Spanish and
 German will be understood by more than a tiny fraction of the lists 400
 subscribers. Presumably, few of you would appreciate regularly receiving
 a
 multitude of postings in Fanakalo, Negerhollands or Chinook Jargon.

 Some subscribers have expressed concern about the apparent awkwardness
 of
 creolists not being able to communicate in Creole, but it should be
 borne
 in mind that there is a large number of mutually unintelligible pidgins
 and
 creoles around the world, and requiring that an individual comprehend
 several dozens of unrelated languages seems unreasonable.

 Although many list subscribers with a Haitian connexion are used to
 seeing Haitian as _the_ Creole, this list is not devoted to Haiti or
 the Haitian language, but to contact languages in general. Similarly,
 discussions of African American culture with no direct link to language
 usage belongs to other fora.

 In the welcome message referred to above, it is clearly stated that
 although "in  principle, anything posted to the list will be forwarded
 directly to its members [...] CreoLIST is intended to serve as a forum
 for
 discussion and exchange of ideas and views on language restructuring".
 In
 other words, this list is exclusively a linguistics mailing list, and we
 ask our subscribers to kindly respect this.

 Finally, we'd like to ask you all to take a moment of your time and
 review
 the CreoLIST policy in its entirety.
 It can be found at:
 http://www.ling.su.se/Creole/CreoLIST/
 or by sending an e-mail with the words:
 %GET Policy
 (note the intitial per cent sign!) in the _subject_ field to
 CreoLIST at ling.su.se

 Kindly direct any comments to this message to our personal e-mail
 addresses,
 _not_ to CreoLIST.

 Thank you for your time,

 Jens Edlund                    Mikael Parkvall
 Webmaster-Creole at ling.su.se    parkvall at ling.su.se
 - CreoLIST list owners