Re: [wolfrunners] Languages & SF/F (fwd)

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>I went to an international HS and elementary school (I
>hopped schools a lot), so other languages and "weird" names don't bother
>me.  But I find that monolinguals have all sorts of strange notions about
>language due to inexperience, not to mention the (incorrect) assumption
>that most of the world is also monolingual.
I think this depends where you live. If the area where you live has a
diverse population, then the monolinguals obviously dont think  most of
the world is monolingual (well, it would be hard for them to, with
different languages being spoken around them). Where I live, there is
quite a bit of diversity (within the four houses on my side of the street
we have: a vietnamese family, my family which is mixed filipino/white, our
neighbors next door who are a japanese/white white couple, and a family
who is japanese/white indian). There's no way that any people on my street
who are monolingual could even begin to think that the rest of the world
is monolingual.

In Monterey, we have many many ethnic festivals, and you can hear
different languages spoken around you quite easily (the Defense Language
Institute is here, as well as the Monterey Institute of International
Studies).  In school, it wasnt a weird thing to hear a friend speak a
language other than English. No one told anyone to "speak American",
because often their friends spoke another language (usually Korean,
Tagalog, Vietnamese, or Spanish) . I'd actually be shocked if I heard
someone from this area telling someone else something like that.

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