[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

Gordon Joly gordon.joly at pobox.com
Wed Jan 23 18:33:32 UTC 2008


At 13:04 -0500 23/1/08, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>In a message dated 1/23/2008 11:08:56 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
>gmaxwell at gmail.com writes:
>
>What is  the minimum number of languages must you write in to
>effectively  communicate with 99.9999% of all the world's  literate
>people?
>


And numerate? You have six significant figures here.

>
>
>Well, the first thing to do would be to count the number of monolinguals, 
>not necessarily the number of languages spoken. For instance, in the 
>US, Canada,
>  Australia, there are a lot of tiny indigenous languages, but most of the 
>speakers communicate effectively in other languages, for better or for worse.
>
>Danny
>

Written Chinese, English and Spanish does it for me...

Gordo

-- 
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