[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Jan 23, 2008 9:03 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 23, 2008 1:41 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >  99.9999% is harder since groups of say 10K are going to have more of an impact.
> >
> > If my maths is right, 99.9999% of the world's populations leaves about
> > 6,500 people that we can not cater to - a group of 10K that only speak
> > one language would require us to cater for their language.
> >
> > If Greg actually meant 99.999%, which his later email would
> > suggestion, then it's 65,000, which is slightly more doable.
>
> I did mean five 9s, yes... it's just a little too easy to keep
> pounding the key. ;)
>
> But the threshold was arbitrary... I'd picked a number to represent
> the notion of "an overwhelmingly vast majority".

Sorry, but lol-whut?

An overwhelming vast majority of *what* ?

I have resisted answering your original e-mail, in the mistaken
belief people would be very swift in reality-checking it. Too bad
that wasn't the case in fact.

There is a good case to be made, and it has been made, that
no nations in Europe survive as nation-states today, whose
"language" (scare quotes there quite deliberate, really) had
not had the bible translated to its language by 1700 or thereabouts...

I would really discourage you from using loaded terms like
"overwhelmingly vast majority" after having defined the
criteria for inclusion of consideration as tight as a gnats ass.

You can say that an "overwhelmingly vast majority" of [define terms
stringently and casuistically] are this or that, but if you define your
terms very exclusively, then words like "overwhelming" are not
yours to deploy, seriously. Nor words like "vast".

With seriously strained respect;

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]