2008/9/8 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.yu>yu>:
Fayu is an extreme example. But for even a small
language such as Serbian (at
most around 10 million of speakers), it would be cheaper to translate entire
English Wikipedia to it than to educate all Serbian speakers in English; not
to mention that the former is actually doable, while the latter is not.
Oh I don't know the level of English spoken in say Poland is quite impressive.
I hope you don't think that people are
contirbuting to English Wikipedia
solely so that they could practice their English.
It does appear to be a motivating factor in some cases.
(Most) human languages arose spontaneously, without
conscious effort, and so
barriers among them are natural and not artificial.
Serbian though is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian where the barrier is
highly artificial (and people now want to divide it further with
Montenegrin).
An increasing number of languages only exist through large scale
government support. Increasing levels of international communication
means that we should see non major languages start to die off.
--
geni