[sw-l] the Amsterdam Manifesto

[Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa]

Signuno,

English was forced on the European Union anyway - think NATO ;-)

It is well known that people who can speak more than 2 spoken/written
languages are more desirable - more in demand etc - than monolingual people
- and more and more jobs in the European Commission and European Union have
called for people with at least 3 languages! :o

The Manifesto recommends either ASL or BSL as the working language at
international conferences - and for Europe, that’s usually BSL - and BSL is
now used by many Europeans...so its already there - so shall we try and stop
it while its going?

The EUD won't decide on anything - and no, it is not the matter of
discrimination - Helga Stevens, the former EUD director, is good with her
BSL :) - yet she know many languages.

Signuno or Gestuno won't work - I go around Europe on a regular basis and I
find that I understand people better if they go and use their national sign
languages - but not everyone would be good at picking up languages or have
the time to go around Europe etc.

I prefer using NISL - but there are not many Europeans who know NISL so BSL
is the next best thing for communication on the European level. I know how
to separate my NISL from my BSL so others have no problems either.

Shane


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] On Behalf Of Valerie Sutton
Sent: 20 January 2005 15:56
To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Subject: [sw-l] A message from Signuno...(it had bounced before)

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005
From: Signuno <signuno at yahoo.fr>
Subject: Re: [sw-l] BSL & English
To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu

Nobody forces Esperanto on anyone, and I suspect
Gestuno is the same.  English is for practical
personal profit, Esperanto for long term efficiency
and diversity on an international scale.  It's a free
choice and most people choose English (look at the
famous http://www.wikipedia.org/ for an idea of
language strength - hopefully SW will appear there
soon).  Mainly it's chicken and egg - I'll learn
Esperanto when everyone else does.

The problem is English speakers can get better jobs,
and they don't need to spend thousands of hours trying
to learn English.  It's not fair, it's linguistic
discrimination.  And that's dangerous - imagine if one
community could get better jobs and had higher
cultural respect by dominating the language of TV and
books!

Same for BSL.  Why should Britain get the advantage?
I can't find the Amsterdam Manifesto on the EUD site,
maybe someone knows where it is, or maybe EUD realized
favoring BSL was discrimination (and EUD is of course
against discrimination) so they removed the document
from their website?

Maybe EUD or WFD should create Gestuno II before it's
too late.  Now they have SW, the task should be much
easier (but still very difficult).

Signuno.


PS more info for the curious
http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20040729/Current_Print.asp
http://lingvo.org/2/3 (I'm currently translating this
into Signuno in SW)


	

	
		
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