[Air-l] minorities

[Enrique S]

Hi all,

As I'm new at this list, first I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm just
a phd student from Argentina, in USA, studying intercultural -and
multilingual- online communities and I found this debate very
interesting. But as a Spanish-speaking researcher I think I can say a
pair of things about this issue.
Language is an obstacle even for those *very few* fortunate like me
that can read, write, listen and speak English in a more or less
acceptable level. But, even more, there are many excellent researchers
 in the world, specially those older and more experienced, for whom
English is an absolute barrier, and because of that the mainstream
research can't get their outcomes.

I agree with Jarek that priorities are first, budget second. What is a
sustainable project worth for without goals? But priorities are so
difficult to agree with when parts don't share backgrounds, and
perspectives.

Unfortunately, we know there are no easy solutions for the old problem
originated in Babel (talking about the Iraqi region... ;-). But as a
start, I would humbly suggest to all English-speakers to make the
effort of learning at least one foreign language and travel to a
country were they have to use it to survive. That's an excelllent
learning experience for anybody. Feeling what's to be 'minority' for a
moment may help them to understand the need of addressing the language
problem.


Regards, saludos, 

Enrique Stanziola
U of Maryland, Baltimore County

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:12:22 -0400, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:
> > Ok, so we don't have the Pentagon budget. Can we afford the loss? I
> > think that our priorities should be put first, then the money will
> > follow, not the other way around.
> 
> then we go bankrupt:)  no thanks:)  sustainability is the first goal.
> if we don't exist anymore, we can't have goals....
> 
> 
> Jeremy Hunsinger
> Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
> () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
> /\ - against microsoft attachments
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Air-l-aoir.org mailing list
> Air-l-aoir.org at listserv.aoir.org
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>