Re: [langue-fr] L'anglais est-il une langue universelle ?

[dvdeug]

At Wed, 20 Dec 2000 13:08:52 -0800 (GMT-0800), Alain LaBonté  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
>[Alain]  I had no intent of asking anything, but since you provoke me,
> I 
>found something with which I wholeheartedly agree:
>>International forums and discussion groups should welcome contributions 
>in all
>>languages if their participants were really seeking the best and most
>>interesting contributions. [...] If people want the best
>>from the Internet, they have to invite back the best by first realizing 
>that
>>original thoughts automatically entail the use of original modes of
>>expression.

So, one paw, most people are incapable of learning another language, but 
on the other, forums should be in many languages, so people have to know 
a dozen languages to understand them. Hmm.

The use of a forum is limited to its participants' ability to understand 
the messages on that forum, including the language.  A forum that mixes 
English, Russian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Greek and Chinese in equal proporation 
will be of little use to many people; the signal to noise ratio will be 
over 1/6 or 2/5 for most people. So 7 different forums will appear with 
s/n rations approaching 1, and anyone wanting to communicate in multiple 
languages can subscribe to multiple forums.

-- 
David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED] off vacation)