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To: KyrosL who wrote (45499)	2/3/2004 4:56:57 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Kyros, my opinion is that that's a load of nonsense: <difficult languages force young minds to exert themselves far more as they are trying to learn how to read and write, during their crucial formative years. And, I am convinced, this effort produces slightly more intelligent people, on the average -- Maurice has theories about this.> That was the old argument for inflicting latin on children. It made them think, it was useful for teaching them english, it blah blah blah load of rubbish. The universe is not short of actual difficult things to think about without making up some arbitrary useless load of nonsense words, so rather than waste children's single chance at learning things that day on something which has no value, give them something which really matters of which there is no shortage and in fact an unlimited supply. Learning latin might help children learn english in the same way that playing snooker might help children learn to play golf, but it would be far better to learn english to get good at english and learn golf to get good at golf. Learning some arbitrary thing doesn't make children's brains any better than learning something useful, though it is probably better to learn latin than to sit in a sensory deprivation room for the same time, which most people would not think is a good idea. The multiplicity of languages is a blot on the planet and the more useless languages will gradually die out. Languages are only any use for communication, storing information and thinking about things. They have no intrinsic value. If all languages were ditched as obsolete and some totally new, systematic and well-designed language was adopted, that would probably be a good idea. What is more likely is that the major languages will maintain position with one or two gaining ascendancy and eventually one tidied up language will take over. English [or more accurately American] seems to be the winning bet. Chinese is a bunch of hieroglyphics going nowhere fast. It has number of users on its side, but not much else. It does look nice. Japanese is better because hiragana are systematic and phonetic [a kind of alphabet] without exceptions [unlike english]. But Japanese has few users compared with Chinese, Spanish or American. Esperanto is allegedly efficient and improved but hardly anyone uses it, so it has a hard row to hoe. American has the numbers, the geographic spread, cyberspace, money - not a bad combination to make it top dog in the linguistics stakes. I'm sticking with olde englishe out of cussedness. Mqurice