[wg-review] Multilingualism

[Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>]

An interesting article regarding the proliferation
of English usage:

World: U.N. delegates overwhelmingly prefer to use
English

The Associated Press 

UNITED NATIONS (March 25, 2001 1:11 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Years ago, English
and French were considered the twin languages of
the diplomacy business. But French is losing
ground, if the United Nations' new guidebook is
any indication. 

For the first time last year, countries listed in
the U.N. "blue book" - a directory of permanent
missions to the United Nations in New York - were
asked to list the language in which they prefer to
receive correspondence. 

Overwhelmingly, it was English. 

The countries were given a choice of English,
Spanish or French because the other three official
U.N.languages - Russian, Chinese and Arabic -
cannot be read by most word processing programs. 

Of the 185 members that responded, 130 preferred
English, 36 chose French, and 19 took Spanish. 

English has apparently gained ground in recent
years partly because new countries formed after
the fall of the Soviet Union prefer it, with only
a few exceptions. 

In Asia, Laos and Cambodia said they preferred
French but Vietnam, also a former French colony,
chose English. Luxembourg took French, but
Liechtenstein took English. Most Arab nations did
the same. 

Brazil, whose native language, Portuguese, is more
closely related to Spanish, picked English. Italy
did, too. Romania, which also uses a Romance
language, chose French. 

Only Canada listed two languages. In purely
diplomatic form, it chose both English and French.

Source:
http://www.nandotimes.com/global/story/0,1024,500467265-500714363-503952987-0,00.html
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