Latin etc.

[JOSEPH E. LAFERRIERE]

>>I would suggest
>>the following list:
>
>>English
>>French
>>German
>>Russian
>>Portugese
>>Chinese
>>Arabic

>languages such as Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic and Bengali, have
>many more speakers than any of the languages using the Roman
>script, with the exception of English and Spanish
>
>Hence, from Laferriere's list, English, Chinese, Russian and Arabic can be
>justified in terms of extent of use, but why French, German and Portuguese? In
>particular, given the inclusion of so many European
>languages, why not the next
>most widely spoken after English, namely Spanish?

!Disculpeme mis amigos latinoamericanos! !Hice un error gigante!
My omission of Spanish was an oversight. Sorry. Spanish has just
as much right to be on the list as English.
      The other choices were
based not merely on number of speakers but also on geography and international
politics. The question is not merely "How many people speak the language?"
but also "Who speaks it?" Hindi and Bengali are spoken by many people, but
almost exclusively on the Indian Subcontinent. People in that region use English
(though NOT American English) as a lingua franca because of the British colonial history.
French is the lingua franca of much of Africa for the same reason, not to mention eastern
Canada, southern Louisiana, and parts of the Pacific and the Caribbean.
       Portuguese I included for the same reason as Chinese: China and Brazil are huge countries
with enormous biodiversity, and viewed by many economists as likely to overtake
the US in political and economic importance sometime in the 21st Century.
German I included partly for historical reasons, as German was one of the chief
languages of scientific publications before Hitler scared most of the scientists out of his
country. There is some evidence that German may be regaining some of its past
importance. Please correct me if I am wrong, but news reports here in the US said
that English only narrowly defeated German in the voting as to which language should
be the official business language of the European Community.

>Who can read and translate chinese entomological description? Not ordinary
>chinese people, who do not know entomological symbols!!

How many ordinary Americans can read such a description in English?

>How many taxonomists speak english or able to read
>english text...  how many
>of taxonomist speak or can read chinese "!!!!!

Maybe they should learn. Certainly any scientist working
in the PRC would be foolish not to learn to read Chinese.

--
Dr. Joseph E. Laferriere
"Computito ergo sum ...  I link therefore I am."