Re: A language by any other name
On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> immo vero scripsit
>
> > On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nick Phillips wrote:
> > > [*] By definition, the English speak English. What the Americans speak is
> > > different to what the English speak. Therefore the Americans don't speak
> > > English.
> >
> > That would mean the Belgian would speak Belgian, right?
> >
> > I doubt it...
>
> No, Belgian would not speak Belgian, but they are "Belgian"
> and thus it can be "belgian", as it were.
Ah.
And would that mean "belgian dutch" (also known as "flemish"), "belgian
french" (also known as "walloon"), or "belgian german"?
What I meant to say is simple: you can't know what language people speak
by having a look at the country they live in. Thus, the english do _not_,
by definition, speak english.
--
wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be
"Human knowledge belongs to the world"
-- from the movie "Antitrust"
rm -rf /bin/laden
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