Re: OT: For information only !

Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:

> Philippe Caquant said:
> > Well, any project whose goal is to make people
> > understand each other is exciting, isn't it ?
>
> Of course. That's what's so exciting about ESL (English as a Second
> Lanaguage) programs.
>
>
>
> > When, as a bonus, one could save some millions
> > (billions?) euros in the Community budget, and thus
> > maybe pay less taxes, it's even more exciting.
>
> Pursuing universal bilingualism (or multilingualism) in English would save
> even more money for the EU, since so many people already speak it as an L1
> or L2. Descriptive and didactic materials are much more readily available
> for English than for any other language, natural or constructed, and
> there's a large infrastructure for teaching ESL (and for training ESL
> teachers themselves) already in place. International economic, technical
> and scientific vocabulary is already based on English. English is a
> national language on every continent of the world, and according to the
> Ethnologue, it is spoken in 104 countries -- making it the international
> auxiliary language of choice that it is today.
And, nonetheless, it's about as likely to be adopted as the EU's sole official
language as is Esperanto.

                                                        Andreas