Re: Urban legends (Was: Fun with the Origin of Chinese spoken languages)

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 19:36:00 GMT

LEE Sau Dan wrote:

> I heard a similar story about the national language of U.S.A. It says
> that they once had a meeting to decide whether German or English
> should be the national language, and the former lost to the later by
> one vote. (But people spreading this legend aren't aware that there
> is no national language at the federal level in the U.S.A.)

The grain of truth in the latter story is that they decided by one vote
not to publish the journal of the Congressional proceedings in a German
translation (for the German-speakers in Pennsylvania, presumably -- the
Dutch language was pretty much or entirely extinct in New York State by
then). 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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