I shall restrict myself so as not to flame. But Your arrogance is
quite infuriating. I shall repeat: English is not a world language.
And Hungarian too is understand by people all around the world.
(As Hungarians, or Second Language speakers of Hungarians live
all around the world.)
Same with German, Spanish, French, Serbo-Croation, etc.
The US does *not* have an authoritative dictionary. If anything
it would be the British Received Standard. Why? Because American
English has Brance off of British English (much like Americans
branched off of the British) and not vice-versa.
And Canada too has its own national dictionaries which designate proper
Canadian English use.
I won't say people like You, but rather opinions like Yours are the reaso=
n
that English and consequently Anglophones are near-demonized in many
places around the world.
And on a final note: I do not mean to institute an international spelling
for English--but if I did, whether or not Americans like it/accept it wou=
ld
be my last concern. If English were or will ever be a World Language,
American opinions about it will be quite irrelevant, won't they now?
----- Original Message -----
From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 1999 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: F=E4nyl=E4jikyl Inglyx
> Roland Hoensch wrote:
>
> > No, NO, NOOOO! English is *NOT* a World Language.
> > English is the *language of several nations around the world*.
>
> Written English is understood by persons around the world. What you ar=
e
> proposing would be a balkanization on a massive scale.
>
> > Each Country has its own national version of English and dictionaries=
as
> > well.
>
> Not. The U.S. has no authoritative dictionary, not even de facto, much
> less de jure. Canada has AFAIK no dictionary at all. Nor India, which
has
> a huge volume of second-language speakers and a small but growing numbe=
r
> of native speakers.
>
> > The end result would be no different than Spanish and Portugese. The=
y
can
> > understand each other, but do not neccessarly speak each other's
language
> > perfectly.
>
> Spanish/Portuguese intelligibility works a lot better in speech than in
> writing, and it's a lot easier for Portuguese-speakers to understand
Spanish
> than vice versa.
>
> Splitting English into utterly different languages would be an unmitiga=
ted
> disaster.
>
> --
>
> Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan
<jcowan@...>
)
>