On Jan 9, 2005, at 2:32 AM, Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski wrote:
RC> Are there countries which outlaw any speakers
of *any other
language*,
RC> from residing in that country?
RC> -Bop
Maybe, but I'm talking about countries where there is only one
language native to that country.
Personally, I find the concept of "native language for a country" to be
something of a broken, and archaic, concept. Languages have never been
defined by rigid lines drawn on a battlefield, or defined by those who
lived in a land 200 years ago. Very few countries (if any?) have had
the same lines for as long as their language has been "native", in a
long term sense. Can you think of any "countries" which have kept the
same language for the last 4000 years, without changing their language?
Another point:
If an english tourist is traveling in Poland or the Ukraine, but
chooses to write wikipedia articles on the road, should they be
compelled to see a website that they cannot understand, before they can
get to a website that they do understand? While some countries may have
an official "native" language, it does not follow that all people who
are writing articles from a given country prefer to (or can) speak the
local language.
-Bop