Re: [seul-edu] Seul.edu through-and-through American

[Alex Heizer <alex@synchcorp.com>]

On Saturday 31 January 2004 06:39 am, Hans Paijmans wrote:
> Dirk Schouten wrote:
> > Hello All, Hello Hans,
> >
> >>I personally would feel more sympathy towards seul.org if they were
> >>not so through-and-through American. They convey the distict feeling
> >>that anything not origionated in the US of A is not worth very much.
> >
> > This morning I checked my mail and found a lot of subjects that had to do
> > with my posting.
> > Thoughts of nightmares went trough my mind: "What did I do wrong"
> > (sometimes I _do_ stupid things).
> >
> > To my amazement I found the above quote.
> >
> > IMHO Hans misuses my posting for his personal grievance. Hans, next time,
> > please utter your linguistic grievances under your own subject header.
> > To the rest of this group, speaking as a Dutchman, I have never felt
> > anything described above towards seul.org. On the contrary.
>
> I stand corrected... until you too will have to speak
> obligatory english at /your/ school in Amsterdam.
>
> In the meantime I am preparing a longer text on the subject,
> with proper subject line.


Perhaps being an American, and you not, it seems obvious to me, as it may not 
to you, that English and American are not the same thing. English is the 
language of England. That the language America speaks is remarkably close to 
English shouldn't make you prejudiced against America. It just means we have 
failed at creating our own distinct language as many sovreign nations have 
done, like Holland. We were very close at one time to having German as our 
official language when our counrty was formed. I can imagine the Queen Mum's 
reaction at hearing that the language of her country now is equated with 
being only an American.

Nonetheless, all programming languages need a common base language or a 
program I write will not work on your computer. What lingua franca do you 
propose all programming languages migrate to so as not to taint them with 
undesirable Americanism? I believe that because most modern computers have 
their physical roots in ENIAC, which, unfortunately was developed in America, 
most programming languages have also shared this American heritage.

Next, we can dicuss the problems with the overtly-American airline industry, 
since all pilots and flight tower personnel must learn English in order to 
ensure safety by eliminating miscommunications.

Perhaps your complaint is not with America, but instead with the programmers 
of the world for not programming in their native languages.

Alex