What is en_US ?

[William Case]

Hi Tim and Tim et al;

On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 10:46 +0930, Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 09:37 -0700, Tim Alberts wrote:
> > Here's a thought, how about quit making up new languages and start 
> > combining others.
> 
> Well, English already does that.  I don't know if others adopt words
> from other languages, like it does.  I wasn't aware of there actually
> being new languages developed, other than colloquial jargon.
> 
> > It's a global society and it'd sure be nice if we all spoke the same
> > language.  Being American I vote for English (because I don't want to
> > learn something new), but honestly, I don't care if it's 
> > Spanish, French, Chinese, Russion, Arabic, pig latin, or something 
> > completely new (that is efficient and makes sense).
> 
> Sure it'd be nice, but I can't see it happening.  It's all politics.
> It's going to be years, maybe centuries, if ever, before we all speak
> human.  ;-)

If the King of the World were to declare tomorrow that from now on there
would only be one language and we all would get a universal dictionary
on our birthday, it might look like he, the King and Tim, had
accomplished their goal.

I guarantee you within a year individuals words, even if spelt and
pronounced the same everywhere, would begin to take on contextual
meanings, and, cultural, political and historical nuances.  Within a
generation we would all be saying "Whaaat?' to each other and within a
century there would be at least a thousand new proto-languages.

Words from the original universal language would retain universal
meanings for global purposes and people would develop local meanings for
local purposes.  Unfortunately most our knowledge of any subject is
local.

-- 
Regards Bill