XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: homestud@hotmail.com   
      
   allan connochie wrote:   
   > "Chess One"  wrote in message   
   > news:Rt4wi.5223$ZW4.3871@trndny04...   
   >>   
   >> "allan connochie"  wrote in message   
   >> news:46c1ca4b@news.greennet.net...   
   >>>   
   >>> "Chess One"  wrote in message   
   >>> news:7cIvi.9965$eb4.7044@trndny08...   
   >>>>   
   >>>>>>>>>> Why say English here? Why not say British?   
   >>>>   
   >>>> the question is, British what? language or culture?   
   >>>   
   >>> People!  That is what was being talked about. Someone suggested   
   >>> that the English weren't good at foreign languages. Someone else   
   >>> wondered why the English were being singled out.   
   >>   
   >> Okay, this language we speak here is Anglo-Celtic, no? John Fowles   
   >> who had a Cornish mother said so. Yet in this, there is much   
   >> variety, and a different stress here and there on regional values,   
   >> which mass media homogenises as if culture were some simile for   
   >> common language, and which it necessarily in its broad appeal,   
   >> glosses the difference thereof. I have not found this universal   
   >> factor of language to be any true indicator of regional or specific   
   >> value, except as [necessary?] expedient to propose political   
   >> affiliation. Cordially, Phil Innes   
   >   
   > I think you're away on a tangent. The discussion was about the   
   > English, should probably be pan-Britsh, failure to speak other world   
   > languages. French, German or Spanish etc.   
      
   Of course, fact is that the English (or Scots, Welsh, and even Irish) are as   
   good or as bad as anyone else at speaking other languages. The reason they   
   don't normally bother is obvious. Most countries speak English, at least as   
   a second language. One of the benefits of once having the most successful   
   Empire ever seen.   
      
   --   
   Hal Ó Mearadhaigh.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)