From: William J Poser (wjposer@ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2006 - 15:37:08 CST
"Jony Rosenne" <jr@qsm.co.il> wrote:
>The majority of the people of the earth cannot read Roman letters.
Possibly, but I've never seen any real statistics on this.
Do you know of any?
>A vaster majority speak no foreign language.
This is not so clear, and depends also on what one considers
a "foreign" language. The ability to speak at least two languages
has been, and still is, very common throughout the world and
throughout history, and in literate societies, the ability
to read and possibly write another language has been common.
Bilingualism is common when a dominant language overlies
local languages and in linguistically diverse small scale
societies, such as (traditionally), here in northern
British Columbia. It seems very likely that the majority
of people who have ever lived have spoken more than one language.
In any case, why is this relevant to the sometimes
heroic and sometimes humorous efforts that postal
services go to to achieve delivery?
Bill Poser
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