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Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 18

From:Tim May <butsuri@...>
Date:Sunday, July 14, 2002, 19:04
Christophe Grandsire writes:
 > En réponse à Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>:
 >
 > >         I am a citizen of:
 > >         A. A country in Western Europe. (11 responses, 32%)
 > >         B. A country in Central Europe. (1 response, 3%)
 > >         C. A country in Eastern Europe. (1 response, 3%)
 > >         D. A country in the Middle East. (1 response, 3%)
 > >         E. A country in the Far East. (0 responses 0%)
 > >         F. A country in North Africa. (0 responses, 0%)
 > >         G. A country in Sub-Saharan African. (0 responses, 0%)
 > >         H. A country in the Austronesian/South Pacific region. (2
 > > responses, 6%)
 > >         I. A country in South America. (2 responses, 6%)
 > >         J. A country in Central America. (0 responses, 0%)
 > >         K. A country in North America. (16 responses, 47%)
 > >         L. Other. (Several responses, all hammered in elsewhere. :)
 > >
 >
 > Quite interesting! The Northern Americans are in majority, but it's only a
 > relative majority, and not that much more than the Western Europeans. And the
 > Non-Northern-American Non-Western-European minority is quite a strong minority
 > with 21%! So contrary to what this Ms. Gunn claimed, and like I had already
 > said, the geographical representation of the list has more to do with the
 > accessibility of Internet to people in different places of the world rather
 > than a cultural restriction of conlanging.
 >

Generally speaking, it's my understanding that the word majority
refers by default to an absolute majority only, so if the NAmericans
have only a relative majority, they don't have a majority at all,
they're just the largest individual minority.  Obviously this becomes
more complex when one can form coalitions, thankfully not something we
have to worry about here.

The New Oxford somehow fails to clarify this.  Does anyone have a
conlang with an interesting way of covering this ground?  (I have no
idea what LC-01 does, I'm still thinking about how to say "X is bigger
than Y".)

Replies

Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Matthew Kehrt <matrix14@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>