Re: CHAT: subtitles

Jake X wrote:

> Which reminds me of something that has always vexed me,
> though it makes perfect sense:  the way languages start and stop
> at the borders of a country.  It always seemed artificial and forced
> to me.
>
> Am I alone on that one?
Well, it's not entirely surprising that people with different languages
would end up with separate governments. But the situation in places like
the French/Italian border, where it's essentially arbitrary where the
line gets drawn, is probably quite different from situations like the
English/French border in Canada, where the languages are more distantly
related. And there are lots of cases of languages like Kurdish or Saami
that cross borders (although there are place names like "Kurdistan" and
"Lapland" referring to regions where these langauges are spoken).

The next logical step is the idea of a nation formed by the speakers of
a language, rather than the set of people living within an arbitrary bit
of land drawn on a map. That's pretty much the impression I get of the
way Zireen cultures are structured; they have nations based on shared
language and cultural traditions rather than territorial regions. They
can still draw maps, but any boundaries that would be marked are either
based on geographical features or distinct differences in the prevalent
language spoken in an area; in some areas the boundaries can't be drawn.