Recently, Sylvain posted:

ktbr wrote:

I don't believe it is any good for freedom either. It makes things
more complicated and increases the requirements for more government.

you probably think this way for having grown up in a mostly
unilingual society and cannot comprehend that things can work
just fine otherwise; I grew up in a country of fewer than 6 million
people; yet manages to have 4 national languages (3 of which have
official status, i.e., used for all official documents -- the
fourth, spoken by fewer than a few tens of thousands counts five
main dialects, and the main official language counts more dialects
than one might care to count, but I digress :-) -- and this, without
counting broken-english has its fifth neither national nor official
yet widely used language. Furthermore, it is one of the most
cosmopolitan country there is, with a very high proportion of
(exotic languages speaking) foreigners. And you know what? it has
been working just fine this way for longer than USA has been in
existence. And there are quite a few other countries like that with
more than one official languages actually. Surely if tiny countries
can pull this off, USA might
have a shot at it too?

One might dream that such might be true, but it is highly unlikely. One
can't have an attitude of priveledge if one wants to meaningfully
communicate with others. Unfortunately, I think it may take generations
for most U.S. citizens to understand this.

Neil