Re: LUNATIC again

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Sally Caves wrote:

> Thank you John... I don't know why I didn't see this OBVIOUS point, and
> Bryan has put it a little more beerishly, ;-) but it generates a new
There is nothing that cannot be better understood in terms of beer.


>         The requirement that there has to be ONE lingua franca language
>         for the world to speak seems a little severe, and one that
That depends on how one defines "world".  Given that Lingua Franca (the
original) didn't do too bad in a large region, there's some chance.  Of
course, Lingua Franca was a *natural* auxlang, not an externally imposed one.

>         Latin really worked as a lingua franca way back when, but it
Lingua Franca worked pretty well, too.

>         was adopted because it was the language of a literature and
>         a culture that was already in existence, and already had
>         attached to it a certain prestige, and a body of classical
>         and religious texts that made studying it worthwhile.
Yeah, kind of like English...

>         But if there were TEXTS out there that made it imperative that
>         the nations of the world unite around them, I could see the
>         creation of a new lingua franca.  But starting from the
And the thing is, these days, there is a large cadre of professional
translaters.