From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 16 2004 - 16:51:38 CDT
In <407DD014.7080605@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Usenet News Support wrote:
>> Bear in mind that the root is Latin, not English. Unless someone suggests
>> using another dead language it actually avoids "my language is as good as
>> yours" thinking
>No, it in fact amounts to "linguistic fascism" for those whose languages
>are not derived from Latin, including all Middle Eastern languages, all
>Oriental languages, languages used by aboriginal people worldwide, African
>languages, Greek, Russian and other Eastern European languages, and
>languages used in the Indian subcontinent -- all told well in excess of
>75% of the world's population. "Re is an abbreviation for the Latin" is
>a smokescreen.
And there I entirely agree with you (though I think you underestimate the
extent to which "Re" would be understood in Eastern Europe). Which is one
of the reasons why its use should be at the least optional, and maybe even
be encouraged to die. But widespread current usage makes it impossible to
perform any sudden execution, and continuing support for it by some
members of this WG may even make it hard to discourage it (but that is an
issue for USEAGE rather than here).
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5