Le sequente esseva disseminate a auxlang per un esperantista. Il es
interessante que necuno de Interlingua pare haber participate in
iste reunion.

Io apologiza pro le facto que le sequente es in anglese:

The following article from the latest issue of "Esperanto" (Dec. 1998, p.
218) might be of interest to some here.

TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE

by Marc van Oostendorp (The Netherlands)
(trans. Don Harlow)

Organized by the European Cultural Foundation with the European Parliament
(EP) and the Culture Ministry of Luxembourg, outstanding linguists and
social scienctists, representatives of the EP and the Council of Europe and
some observers from outside Europe met in conference. There were four sessions:

- The European language situation.

Abram de Swaan, a Dutch sociologist, presented his theory of _political
sociology of the world language system". The Welsh language geographer
Colin Williams and the Catalunyan psycholinguist Miguel Sigua'n spoke of
the relationship between language and nationality, especially from the
perspective of the so-called regional languages such as Welsh or Occitan.
These lectures were commented on by among others Robert Phillipson, who
encouraged a more serious study of the structure of the Esperanto movement,
because in his experience this could be very instructive.

- Languages in the state of Europe.

Wolfgang Mackiewicz and Ingrid Gogolin, German sociolinguists, and their
Dutch colleague Guus Extra, spoke, mainly on the question of what languages
European children should learn in school. Mackiewicz explained the EU's
policy: every citizen is to learn at least two of its official languages,
besides that of his own country. Gogolin and Extra demonstrated that the
situation is much more complicated, mainly because of the group of
"non-native" languages now spoken in Europe. In their comments Marc van
Oostendorp introduced the term _ius potentis_: those who hold power decide
what language is to be used. For that reason Europeans insist that the
"native, official" languages are to be learned by all citizens in Europe,
and the "regional" and "non-native" languages have fewer rights. He
proposed studying more democratic alternatives, mainly Esperanto.

- Languages in the politics of Europe.

Marc Abeles, a French anthropologist, reported on his studies in the EP,
with anecdotes about puns translated as "please laugh or you'll look
stupid". The French political scientist Virginie Mamadouh reviewed
possibile solutions: one natural language for everybody, one artificial
language for everybody, several natural languages, etc. She believed that
Esperanto could be introduced in principle, but only through "a project
with tremendous mobilizing power", scarcely imaginable in the current EU.

- Toward a new language policy for Europe.

Amitav Choudry, a sociolinguist, gave an overview of the situation in his
country, Bharat (India). The Dutch political scientist John Grin presented
a means of deciding on Europe's language policy; he warned that proposals
resulting only from rational analysis risk failing catastrophicaly because
of spontaneous opposition, the more so when the involve "nobody's language,
Latin or Esperanto". Among those who commented was the South African
sociolinguist Neville Alexander: he too emphasized that the Esperanto
alternative should be considered more seriously.

The participants in the inspiring conference were, unorthodoxly, open to
all solutions -- as was also shown by the discussion of Esperanto. A second
conference on the same subject will be held next April.


-- Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/
(English version: http://www.webcom.com/~donh/dona.html)
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Stan Mulaik