On 2/22/24, Alyssa M via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote: > [ ... ] > Perhaps I'm missing something obvious. > You're not: there is a very large grey area between English language exceptionalism and internationalisation madness.
As a citizen in a country where eleven languages are declared equivalently "official" with sign language on the way to be added to the list, I can offer some opinions. First, I see small groups of tourists in the backpackers I co-manage being quite comfortable using English across the various European languages that are their mother tongues and secondly, the local vernaculars (nine African languages and Afrikaans which derives from Dutch) are absorbing more and more English, quite noticeably so, but the local variety of English is also being distorted to accommodate the local phonetics (that, of course happens across the Anglophone world and even in countries where English is an acquired taste), Catering for internationalisation is a losing game, adjusting for it is a short term waste of effort, with no clear vision of what rules could possibly improve the situation. I guess being English speaking is an asset and that may well become the foundation. Occasionally Esperanto is mentioned, but my experience suggests that is as hopeless as the adoption of Swahili in Africa. PS: thanks for documenting your efforts, they will save others a lot of brain-ache. -- Lucio De Re 2 Piet Retief St Kestell (Eastern Free State) 9860 South Africa Ph.: +27 58 653 1433 Cell: +27 83 251 5824 ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tbc78d29ab04652a2-Mda9d66a0e626be4b46745244 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
