Following on from Irene Molina's message, and in
English because my Spanish is so poor ---
This has hit the nail on the head in pointing out that far from
knowledge of other languages being
elitist, one can get away with knowledge of ONLY English
only because it has been the language of 2 countries with a history of
colonialism, noecolonialsm, etc. Those who have aspired to
professional, academic, 'culture industry' etc. types of work in
the dominated nations have had to
learn more than one language like it or not.
As I understand it Irene is also uncomfortable with the idea of
classifying everyone else's languages as 'other' in an indiscriminate
way and trying to legislate for our attitudes towards them all in the
same breath. All this does seem to need more careful thought. Maybe
people will follow on by feeling free to write to the list in whatever
language they feel most happy with. Then perhaps we would all be motivated to
think about better ways of maintaining and developing communication
with each other as most appropriate for whatever is being discussed,
which might not be the same for every purpose?
mel
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