Re: CHAT: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

From: "Sally Caves"

> Well, yeah... upstate New York, as a matter of fact... and by anybody
> else who has ever been exposed to it or has borrowed words from it.
> Like my sisters, my husband, and some of my friends.   But just to
> be a straight man to your jest, here, heh heh... it's simply the
> principle of the thing.  Not the inapplicability of the Declaration
> to Teonaht, not the anachronism... it's just that it seems to be
> making a mockery of a serious project.  The Human Rights people
> are looking for actual cultures of people who participate in the
> world and speak a language that may be overlooked by others or
> in danger of dying out.  That speak to world diversity.
Sally has verbalized my squeamishness about it precisely. I shall be
attempting a translation today, and will eventually post it on the ever
elusive and mythical website, but this is a little different from the "World
Poem" project of the past. I don't fear the black helicopters, but I'm not
at all sure that the warm fuzziness of the Human Rights project extends to
artlangs, or if such a submission would not be interpreted as anything more
than mockery, which I certainly would not intend. Still, it's tempting.

Also, the site has some major glitches. I don't remember all of what I
stumbled across, but Hungarian was cited as the official language of China.
Swedish in Karakoa? and the like. I'll ruminate as I translate.

Kou