[Last-Call] ESL (digression): Re: On satire, sarcasm, etc (was: Re: Last Call: BCP 83 PR-Action Against Dan Harkins)

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 09:36:24AM -0400, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> The IETF choses to do its work in English, though that choice is likewise not more "justified" than other choices, it's just  what the majority likes.  

Fun digression:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language

A statistic such as "L2 speakers (Ethnologue.com 2013)" showing english at the
top of second languages with 979 million is probably the type of justification
to pick english - not sure where to find the likely more relevant numbers
for likely/candidate participants of our community, but i would think
everybody assumes that it would show english even more differentiated at the top.

I guess if we would choose to go with that wikis page for the most common
second language, all the hard work on internationalization in the IETF would
finally pay of for the community itself. Whereas nowadays we arguably
would not loose much for the community itself if we would go back to
7-bit ascii. 

Of course, getting Hindi up that high in that list is a nice effect of India
itself being so multi-cultural and differentiated in first languages that
there was a great opportunity for Hindi to grow as the second language.
One of the interesting aspects to learn when visiting the country.  Well played India ;-)

Cheers
   toerless