>Yes, but once learned, the redundancy is useful. I can understand
>someone who is speaking USsouthern, AustrailianGen, BritishGen,
>MerkinGen, and very heavily accented english with realitive ease,
>minus local slang (I can't *read* scots, but I can understand it
>spoken).

Funny, I can read Doric fine, but hearing it spoken often defies my comprehension. And I misunderstood the "redundancy" -- that's just a restatement of what I said about why it's so common as a second language. It's just the geographical spread of the language, and the political power of the countries in which it's the main first language. (Although, it's worth noting the widespread rise of Mexican Spanish in the States, which means that Spanish is growing in prominence. I even heard one person who works as a translator say that Spanish will probably be the next major international language, and possibly even supercede English.)

>speak almost as well as I speak english. I know one guy who grew up
>in Paris. And couldn't speak with the locals when he went elsewhere
>in the country.

My French is rather rusty, but my accent is solid, and I've been told by Quebecois that I sound like a native Parisian.

> So that kinda flubs that. I don't speak esperanto,
>just because, well, I don't see a use for it.

I find it an entertaining diversion, and I like the idea of being able to go to most industrialized countries and find locals who wear a green star, thus obviating the need to learn the local language. (Esperanto is partially successful in that goal.) And it's amazingly easy to learn, far more so than any natural language (or, for that matter, any other artificial language I've come across). And there's a number of online communities in which the only common language is Esperanto -- no English, no French, no natural languages, just Esperanto.

>I speak languages that
>are useful to me in everyday life. 'MerkinGen and USmex. I'd like to
>learn japanese, but I doubt that happening unless I decide to take in
>Uni.

I plan to learn enough Japanese to be able to read it and comprehend it spoken. I know words here and there -- mostly, the kind I've learned to pick up when watching subbed anime and want to find words that don't translate (like sempai). (For instance, it adds a whole 'nother layer to Asuka and Kaji's relationship in NGE when you know that she calls him Kaji-sempai.)

>So? I think that Hawiian is painful to learn and speak...It's still
>used frequently in hawaii...If you grew up speaking it, it wouldn't be
>painful to learn, you'd just pick it up. And speaking it, well, same
>thing. You would have nothing to compare to.

Well, yeah. English is also painful to learn. Most people don't think it about their native language; to native English speakers, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. But it's a wildly inconsistent language, and well on its way to having all meaning derived strictly from word placement, which is a headache to learn for speakers of languages where meaning is based more on inflection. (One of the things I like about German and Esperanto both is noun declension -- lets me play around with noun placement to alter emphasis without changing objective meaning, something I have to mess around with passive vs. active voice in English to do, but doing that in English has side effects I may not want. For instance, "_Min_ amas ^si" in Esperanto is far more dynamic and succinct than anything English can produce.)

>That's why I said basterdized. Not only that, but the main reason
>that perl is so nasty is that you can do some really screwy things
>with it, and it's just sort of given that you will do screwy
>things with it, if at all possible.

Which is one of the things I like about it. I like seeing Perl constructs dropped into net.conversations, same thing as seeing C constructs in net.conversations, and while I find the idea of an artificial language based on a programming or scripting language interesting purely as an intellectual exercise, it seems impractical as something useful from day to day.

-- Sean --

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