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[Eric Sosman]

<OT!>
On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:56:47 -0400, Eric Sosman

Damn! As a voting and newswatching merkin (is that an oxymoron?)
I knew there was something left out of all the recent bailouts and
stimulus packages, but I just couldn't remember what. It was those
poor friendless character sets! We need to strengthen our character
sets! <Strangelove> We must not allow a character set gap!

As a fellow Merkun, and with some relevance to the matter
of character sets larger than Our Own, I repeat this trifle:

A person who speaks several languages is "multilingual."

A person who speaks two languages is "bilingual."

A person who speaks one language is "American."

(The word "badly" may be inserted in the last sentence, if your
taste so dictates.)

 

[James Kuyper]

Eric Sosman wrote:
....

As a fellow Merkun, and with some relevance to the matter
of character sets larger than Our Own, I repeat this trifle:

A person who speaks several languages is "multilingual."

A person who speaks two languages is "bilingual."

A person who speaks one language is "American."

I'm an American who has learned Spanish, German, Russian, a little bit
of Korean, and Mandarin. However, in more than three decades of
programming in this country, I have to admit that I've never needed to
write C code that had to interpret characters outside of the C basic
character set. I've written any number of filters that would pass such
characters from one place to another without interpretation, but that's
a much simpler case to deal with.

 

[Phil Carmody]

In the interests of international amity, I would like to mention that
there is an American who lives not too far from me, who speaks fluent
Portuguese and pretty good English.

She's from Brazil.

<snip>

One of my American workmates is also a multi-lingual, and, yes, he's from
the United States. He speaks Spanish and English very well, and some
spatterings of French and Italian too. The education system in the United
States of Mexico can be complimented.

Phil