We've had the discussion before on the list, Danny. We went with the official languages of the US and Canada. Having said this, I don't see why we should not add Spanish if there is consensus. If we do this however, we should be clear on why we exclude other languages used in North America: Inuktitut, Cree, Chinese, Italian, Punjabi, etc. _________________________________________ Luc Faubert Conseiller en gouvernance TI et en gestion du changement / IT governance and change management consulting +1 514 236 5129 www.LucFaubert.com www.isoc.qc.ca www.ccig.ca www.maillons.qc.ca
-----Original Message----- From: na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Danny Younger Sent: 11 avril 2007 18:57 To: bfausett@internet.law.pro; na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org; At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Action Items
With regard to the Draft Operating Principles point #4 that states "Public documents will be produced in English and French", I would like to know why a decision was made not to include Spanish.
I'm told that Canada's population is currently about 33 million (with Wikipedia reporting that "roughly 31% of Canadian citizens are French-speaking). That translates into around 10 million speakers of French. As of the last U.S. Census, America had 1,700,000 French speakers. Combined figures would therefore total around 12 million French speakers in the region.
Spanish speakers in the U.S. totaled a little more than 17 million in the year 2000 and everyone knows that the U.S. has been inundated lately with illegal immigrants from South of the border. Clearly, Spanish is a language used in the North American region to a greater degree than French.
Let me also remind everyone that in Puerto Rico (part of ICANN's North American Region) the dominant language spoken is Spanish.
Reference documents: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Canadian http://www.icann.org/montreal/geo-regions-topic.htm
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