[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

Nikola Smolenski smolensk at eunet.yu
Mon Sep 8 19:40:32 UTC 2008


On Monday 08 September 2008 19:17:44 geni wrote:
> 2008/9/8 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.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.

So?

> > 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.

So?

> > (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).

No, actually, Serbo-Croatian is a dialect of Serbian. And the barrier is 
highly non-existant.

> 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.

So?




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