Hello Rich, Whenever culture (language is one) is touched on, there bound to be hot-airs ... Well I happened to know English adequately, but I am afraid I know next to nothing in Spanish therefore if you did response in Spanish, I would be lost. But then perhaps I could write in Dutch or Chinese or Malay? And then perhaps you would be lost (perhaps not) ... therefore I would not think lightly on what Gore said : Language unit America. I am European living in a community where there are presently 25 officials national languages among the 350 millions citizen. And I only know 2 of them. So ... Americans should count their blessing that someone had the foresight to 'unit' America with a Single language. The next country you might want to think about is China. China is united by ONE way (almost one way although there are differences in some expressions) of writing eventhough not all might speak Mandarin especially the older generation. Imagine if China did not do that, China would be facing ??? (perhaps wikipedia would give the exact number) different dialects. That is not the smartest way to rule a country of that size. I am sure you would agree. Another is India. Or Phillippines. Then of course there is Canada. The last I heard from a Chinese immigrant in Canada, the new language requirement for anyone wishing to migrate to Canada is want to immigrante to Canada is BOTH French and English. Perhaps the English speaking Canadians could not understand the French speaking Canadians? Then to quote what you wrote: > Or is the problem on the other end? If we use technology, do we end up with a dozen operating systems and hundreds of applications to "be fair"? (like the argument of using Chinese, Vietnemese, Korean, etc) < ... OH YES, I happened to work for an American company for 5 years ... and you bet, they had/have so many different websites that I lost counts how many, they might not have dozens of operation systems, but there were enough to cause headaches especially during the dot.com era (before it went burst) when new companies were added every other months. And nobody wants to give up their systems. As for immigrants not wanting to learn the host language (I wrote willingly or unwillingly to differentiate those that would not want to learn, and those that through no fault of their own might not be good at learning another language for example) is a true fact. Therefore now there is requirement if anyone want to be Dutch the person MUST pass the Dutch language test. Dutch is not the same as English. English is a de facto international language, Dutch is not. Most people know and speak some form of English. But Dutch is only spoken by the people in NL, part of Belgium, Surinam, some in the Dutch Antilla, S. African (some form of Dutch), and some in Indonesia. The Dutch governement is making an effort to correct the mistake they made for not paying attention to langauge divide with immigrants in the past. A 'common language' to make sure the citizens can communicate with one another to avoid segregation and other social issues. Another feature is, all Dutch students are r! equired to pass two foreign languages at the minimum before reaching high school level. That is to make sure we can understand our neighbours. Cindy
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