Amara Graps wrote:
> >From Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net) Sat, 29 Apr 2000
>
> >With the speech recognition and synthesis software in its *current* state,
> > which is not perfect but pretty good, it is clear that there is no longer
> > any need for people to learn languages. Rather they will buy them.
>
> However, this idea misses something that I think is an important aspect
> to learning a language: learning the culture.
>
> Embedded in the language are the thousands of nuances that describe a
> culture of people.
With wearable translators, we will create an entirely new kind of
culture, one that is international and technology oriented. We will
need an entirely new grammar without those subtle cultural nuances,
which will let any language recognize any other, which will be a
subset of our current languages. That subset will be free of the family
secrets that countries have, such as if I make references to Monica
Lewinski. (This is a poor example, because the U.S.'s dirty laundry
really is aired before the entire world, but you get my drift?)
Every language will invent a universal subset of itself that will
be good for expressing business, sports, weather and ideas
about the future. spike
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