On 08 Jul 2003 22:05:56 GMT, jigsaw1695@aol.com (JIGSAW1695) wrote:

>Subject: Re: Guantanamo death chamber protest
>From: Fermin Sanchez usenet@fermin.ch 
>Date: 7/8/2003 5:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <Xns93B2E9C9F7284usenetferminch@usenet.fermin.ch>
>
>"danh" <danh@lexisnexis.com> wrote in
>news:beeej2$qg5$1@mailgate2.lexis-nexis.com: 
>
>>>> In the Spanish-speaking world, Dan, it it much more common than you
>>>> would imagine ...
>>> I have to agree with daisy, for once. The name "Fermin Sanchez" in
>>> Spain is as common as "Hans Meier" in Switzerland or "John Smith" in
>>> the US.
>> Spain is not the entirety of the "Spanish-speaking world".  I can't
>> speak to Hans Meier, but I'll take the bet that the number of John
>> Smith's in the U.S. dwarfs the number of Fermin Sanchez' in Spain,
>> both numerically and percentage-wise.
>
>As far as the spanish language is concerned, Spain is indeed the 
>"spanish-speaking world". afair, the name of the institute setting the 
>standards of the spanish language for the whole spanish speaking world 
>is "Instituto de la lengua espaņola", based in Madrid. It really makes 
>life easier for the spanish speaking, because we don't have things like 
>"us english" or "uk english" (center vs. centre, just to mention one 
>example). And certainly no bitching around about "americanisms" or 
>"anglicisms", the British claiming that the Americans still owe them 
>taxes (and wasn't there some tea spoiled by sudden contact with salt 
>water in Boston?), and so on ... ;-)
>
>Don't know who would "win" the battle, "Fermin Sanchez" or "John 
>Smith"; but it could be close. According to various resources like 
>"Ethnologue" [1], "InfoPlease"
>[2] and "Web of culture" [3], english is not even *the* most spoken
>language, and spanish is catching up (rank 4). This statistic should
>be fairly recent (InfoPlease -> [2]):
>
>Language :: Approx. number of speakers 
> 1. Chinese (Mandarin) :: 1,075,000,000 
> 2. English :: 514,000,000 
> 3. Hindustani :: 496,000,000 
> 4. Spanish :: 425,000,000 
> 5. Russian :: 275,000,000 
> 6. Arabic :: 256,000,000 
> 7. Bengali :: 215,000,000 
> 8. Portuguese :: 194,000,000 
> 9. Malay-Indonesian :: 176,000,000 
>10. French :: 129,000,000 
>
>===============================
>
>Damn...French was at one time the international language of diplomats. Now look
>at it. It just barely made the top ten.
>
>The international language is now English regardless of the population of a
>country.

*clickety clack*

w00f