From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61371
Date: 2008-11-04
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
>
> Regarding English and its lack of chicness. Because it's a multi-national
> language that doesn't belong to a single empire and doesn't have a single
> standard, it's seen as a tool rather than a mark of identification. Rather
> like Vulgar Latin, it tolerates differences that would have been seen as
> separate languages in most language communities. My ancestors all arrived
> in America speaking other languages and certainly did not see themselves
> as bound into a community by knowledge of English. For them, integration
> into an American community occurred when former Gaelic, Welsh, French,
> Dutch and German speakers began to intermarry in the mid-1700s, after
> 50-150 years in America.
>
==============
That may be right from a sheer biological point of view,
but I'm afraid you are dreaming of some post-international, post-national
status,
From the point of view of Chinese people, of Arab-Muslim people, or from my
own point of view, you are not "multi-national" nor "inter-national".
You are American.
(And I'm not. I can't vote for the President who has the most bombs and
bastards under his thumb).
And it does not matter there's a component somewhere in the process that
used to be French,
because this is now irrelevant.
It's quite strange that you are coming back to that issue,
You seem unable to assume the fact that you are American,
What your ancestors used to be is gone in the sewer.
And your claim English does not belong to an Empire will sound definitely
absurd to 80% of the planet.
Do you also mean that Mac Donald and Monsanto are not part of the Empire ?
I understood you are living in Central America, brainwashing people into
speaking English, isn't that right !?
You are part of the Big Device.
Arnaud