David Crystal's red alert

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

At 18:27 20/11/2005, Doug Ewell wrote:
>JFC (Jefsey) Morfin <jefsey at jefsey dot com> wrote:
>
>>http://www.yobserver.com/news_8624.php
>>Some of my positions better described.
>
>Crystal's book, reviewed in this Yemen Observer article, argues that 
>(1) languages other than English will remain important and must be 
>preserved, and (2) the importance of regional variants of English is 
>growing rapidly and must be recognized.
>
>Surely no group has demonstrated a stronger commitment to promoting 
>the use of minority languages and regional variants of English over 
>the Internet, by encouraging their accurate identification, than 
>ietf-languages.

Dear Doug,
We agree on the effort, and on the probable motivations of most of 
the members of this group. However when the author says "Among the 
reasons set out by Crystal for the death of languages are natural 
disasters, cultural assimilation and homogenization, displacement or 
decimation of indigenous communities, and socio-economic pressures", 
I would add the technico-economic pressures.

The ietf-languages group is by essence where these pressures can be 
applied or blocked, as far as the leading technology is concerned. My 
fear, coming for a part of the real world which is not the one of 
most in here, are the perverse effects which happens in _every_ human 
effort. These perverse effects (which are not investigated) would 
make this effort to help these pressures and would support 
technically and culturally unjustified political or technical doctrines.

Doing a good job is a good thing. Doing a good job for an unethical 
cause, makes that job unethical and is a bad thing.

Your own remark on "Guam" shows that you are not happy with the 
obligation to only respect RFC 3066. My position only goes a step 
further in term of security: I have no objection to _also_ support 
RFC 3066, I have no objection to even set-it up as a _default_. I 
have a very deep ethic concern at making it _exclusive_. This leads 
this group to twist reality and spoil a great and good job to _only_ 
match it. I have a practical deep problem in having no way to 
non-conflictingly match other needs in term of modes, tones, styles, 
mediums, dates, sociolinguistic or trade entities, etc. etc.

In this I share the "red alert". What happened in Tunis, for example, 
just after the UNESCO GA where the mood was different, gives me the 
bitter feeling of a Monroe split - in addition to the perfectly 
understandable and acceptable technical, political, economical and 
societal positions of the various sides.

The "red alert" is for this group to make sure that its work (which 
will greatly extend with RFC 3066 bis if applied) has ethical 
effects. This is the same kind of moral concerns as the people of the 
Manhattan Project had. And I think the impact on the people of the 
world - through their language and cultures - is of the same magnitude.
jfc