{"id":43537,"date":"2014-05-02T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43537"},"modified":"2014-05-02T13:31:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T18:31:15","slug":"a-public-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43537","title":{"rendered":"A Public Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

To: Daniela Hernandez, Dartmouth PC natterer<\/a>
\nFrom: Mitch Berg, campesino<\/em> ingobernable
\nRe: Nuestra dva sprache<\/p>\n

Ms. Hernandez,<\/p>\n

Language is the supremely public good.<\/p>\n

Nobody owns it. Even the French discovered that the full weight of national power can go so far in governing how people use your language.<\/p>\n

Now, you’re the woman who’s been nattering at the supremely gullible administration at Dartmouth (“the poster child for the higher-ed bubble”) about peoples’ use of Spanish terms like Fiesta.<\/p>\n

Since you’re only getting a degree from Dartmouth, I’ll explain this slowly: \u00a0people adopt works from other languages, usually (not necessarily always) because the word works better than the local word.<\/p>\n

So you have ever, even once, sat in your sauna drinking rooibos tea from an itsy-bitsy bamboo demitasse listening to the music blare from the frat, you can thank the Finns, Hungarians, South Africans Afrikaans speakers, the Dutch, French, the Dutch again, and Latin.\u00a0 Or stop oppressing them.\u00a0 Your choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And since, like all the words above, your fellow PC indoctrinees<\/del> students are using “Fiesta” to mean roughly<\/del> exactly what it means in Spanish, I suggest you relax. \u00a0Or contact your ombudsman…<\/p>\n

…oops. Norwegian.<\/p>\n

That is all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To: Daniela Hernandez, Dartmouth PC natterer From: Mitch Berg, campesino ingobernable Re: Nuestra dva sprache Ms. Hernandez, Language is the supremely public good. Nobody owns it. Even the French discovered that the full weight of national power can go so far in governing how people use your language. Now, you’re the woman who’s been nattering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,18],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-43537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battle-for-the-language","category-pc","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43550,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43537\/revisions\/43550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}