On Wed, 27 Mar 1996, Michael Helm wrote:
Americans are typically thousands of miles away from those speaking Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hindi, [...] I don't really disagree with the conclusions drawn by this poster, or with the quasi-economics argument he makes. However, I must say that
On Mar 27, 3:13am, Timothy C. May wrote: the above is completely wrong. MOST Americans live in large urban areas, & as such are within seconds/footsteps of people whose native languages are not English (or who don't have a single "native language", but several!).
Undeniably true. I think Tim's point was more, "Who cares? Everyone *I* want to talk to speaks English." One may quibble with the wisdom or morality of such a statement, but if the second statement is true in your case, then there is no reason you should have to learn another language. Most upper-income Americans have no need for esoteric languages. Almost all upper-income Americans have a need for English. For example, *I* only really need to speak English, TCP, Spanish, HTML, AppleTalk, and occasionally French and Perl. Most of the time, I have no need to know C++, IPX, Tagalog, higher mathematics, German, or Java; I've got "people" for that. I'm probably wrong to put my faith in y'all to write the code I use, but hey, we can't all do everything. I don't write crypto code, and I don't haul my trash to the dump or tend to the landscaping around my apartment. Why should I? Then again, I do find it worthwile to be on the cypherpunks list, and I will say hola to the gardener. -rich