[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do not understand why people who speak English equate the ability to speak
>> a language with a country.. English, French, German, Dutch and many many
>> other languages are spoken in multiple countries. Consequently it is wrong
>> to call people who support their mother tongue nationalist.
>
> It may not always be the case, but for smaller languages, especially
> languages which are closely tied to a particular region, the two might
> very well be closely connected. Just because english isn't tied to a
> single country and there is no sense of nationalism in it, that does
> not prove the point for all languages. It is an over-simplification to
> ignore the possible ties between the two.

Yes. Actually, there are such tendencies (regionalisms, nationalisms)
even in English itself; especially in pronunciation. Relation between
society and language is a very well known issue in (socio)linguistics.

But, at the other side, Gerard is right. The fact that language may be
used by nationalists is not relevant here. The most relevant issue
here is accessibility of texts for people which native languages are
very diverse.