language for communication

[Bijoy Misra]

While I respect the sentiments that people should be free to 
communicate in any language they want, I wish to point out
that the communication is useful when it is understood by
the people who are assembled.  English seems to be acceptable 
language of communication(for good or bad).  Any creative writing 
has however a lot more value when done in one's native language.

Without getting further into the philosophical aspects of 
communication (which is extremely interesting), let me request 
that we agree that English be used as the primary language of
communication.  I will also request that we have a set
of net volunteers who may help translate material to English
such that it gets understood.  While saying this, let me volunteer
to translate stuff from Sanskrit and Hindi to English if such
postings occur.

It will be cool if people occasionally create postings
in Sanskrit!

- Bijoy Misra.


On Thu, 12 Sep 1996, Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

> Dominik wrote:
> 
> >discussion list. The main languages of indological scholarship include
> >French and German, and postings in these or other languages are welcome,
> >with or without translation.  
> 
> To me as a person with a European educational background, postings in French
> or German do not create a problem. I am not so sure about Americans, and
> certainly not so sure about our colleagues in India, some of whom may have
> thought it more worthwhile to learn other languages than French and German.
> Putting French and German on an equal footing with English (the one European
> language that educated Indians are certain to master) is in my opinion a
> rather eurocentric thing to do these days (and we do want to communicate
> with Indian colleagues too,don't we?) I think English should be the business
> language of Indology. Apabhramshas like German and French should be left for
> internal use in those countries, like Norwegian is left to Norwegians.
> 
> Best (provocative?) regards,
> 
> Lars Martin Fosse
> 
>