From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Wed Apr 28 2004 - 21:43:45 CDT
Usenet News Support wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
>
>
>>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.
>
>
> No, unless you have an alternative dead language to suggest.
It is not necessary to have any sort of tag in any language.
> The advantage
> of Latin is that no one is speaking it,
I know of a number of child-molesting, pointy-hat-wearing persons
who regularly speak Latin. (I generally avoid them,.on the principle
that Lucretius (a Roman poet) was right when he wrote (in Latin)
"TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM".
> Therefore it avoids choosing one current language over another.
Deprecating gratuitous modification of the Subject field when following
up avoids choosing any language, and runs no risk of imposing
linguistic fascism on those whose languages are not rooted in Latin
and which might well use non-Latin scripts.
> You might also consider that it is the most common of the abbreviations
> supported by any client with widespread use. I am unaware of any which
> doesn't support Re: if it supports anything, although other abbreviations
> are supported as well.
"Supported" to the extent that reading agents and related agents need to
jump through hoops to recognize and ignore it in order to support some
forms of sorting and searching by Subject field.
> This seems to be an example of "codify existing practice."
Considering the difficulties caused, as well as the linguistic fascism
issues, it is best to deprecate such gratuitous modifications.