Re: Uusisuom language (Online lesson)

Ray wrote:> >Russian is spoken by
> >hundreds of millions of people the world over, from Eastern Europe to the
> >tip of Alaska
>
>Yes - but why?  It was taken thither by the Tsarist armies and continued to
>be used over this vast area in the old Soviet Union.  To many it is, alas,
>too much identified with a language of imperialism.
>
>If Uusisuom is to have any appeal for the international use that you would
>like it to have, I would suggest forgetting the Russian influence (or at
>least, minimizing it).
Isn't this a bit hard on Russian? The English rank among the very few
peoples who've been even more successful as imperialists than the Russians
(in 1922, some 22% of the world's land area belonged to the British Empire),
and yet English is the closest thing to an international language there is
today.

Now, you can argue that the British were generally nicer than the Russians
and the Soviets, and I guess I'd have to agree, but you can't very well deny
that English have largely spread by Imperialism. Also, the USA is widely
seen as an Imperialist power today, which seems to do very little to
decrease English's popularity.

                                                   Andreas
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