[governance] MSism and democracy

[Daniel Pimienta]

>I'm afraid, however, that it isn't all that 
>useful in practice. It works well in a true 
>bilingual setting, but not so well in larger, really multilingual environments.

Dear Tapani,

There is a huge amount of subjectivity in the language issue.

Your argumentation is perfectly correct and nobody shall disagree.
The fact is that each person can develop his/her 
own judgment/argument in the matter of selection 
of the language to express in a virtual 
international community, and, the same, nobody shall disagree.

The key point is only to respect each person's 
subjectivity when it comes to the decision of the 
language to express (this point, by the way, can 
easily be argued as a basic Human Right).

If that premise is clear, then, depending on 
contexts, budgets, priorities, etc. the 
collectivity can make decision on using 
interpreters/translators (high cost and high 
quality) or devices for mutual intercomprehension 
aid (low cost and low quality). Obviously this is 
not binary and there is a continuum of cost vs. 
quality options and real pragmatism is to pay due 
attention to the options instead of concluding 
the only option is Englih for every one.

Ignoring the issue (with the pretext of a non 
neutral "pragmatism") is simply ignoring the 
basic right of too many people (the percentage of 
the Human population understanding English is 
estimated by many experts less than 15% of the 7 
billons, even if, obviously, this figure may rise 
up in specific socio-profesional environments).

Sydämellisesti,

Daniel




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