Quote:
Originally posted by Cletus Miller
S--
Don't you answer your own implied question--Why do people want to be governed by people who have the same native tongue? at the end of this post when you say: "It seems to be part of human nature to not trust someone whose native tongue is unintelligible to you or at least hard for you to understand."? Seems rational enough to me. If you don't speak/read the language of your government, then you don't know what your government is doing to you.
How would you feel if the official language of California (or the US) was changed to Spanish, so that all government business was transacted in Spanish and all publications in Spanish only? I would feel excluded and if I were a part of a large community of English-speakers who couldn't get the Spanish-speaking government to accomodate us, I would want my own country with English as the language of the government.
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FWIW, the Swedish-speaking Finn I know has no apparently loyalty whatsoever to Sweden, and every apparent loyalty to Finland, notwithstanding that most of his countrymen don't speak his first language. OTOH, he is bilingual (tri-, including English), which is maybe more common in other parts of the world.
