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As is said in The Rosseta Project ( http://rosettaproject.org ):
"Just as globalization threatens human cultural diversity, the languages of small, unique [...] human societies are at serious risk. In fact, linguists predict that we may lose as much as 90% of the world’s linguistic diversity within
the next century."
I have noticed that whereas people from more populous countries enjoy plenty of opportunities to communicate in their mother tongues abroad, for a minority language speaker, these opportunities are very hard to get by.
So, the idea is to have a law that enforced the telephony companies to allow free long distance calls for minority language speakers to their homelands.
The Rosseta Project
http://rosettaproject.org
The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages. [Inyuki, Aug 14 2011]
A Solution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server
Gmail lets you call to U.S. phones for free, so having a proxy server in the U.S. for your friends to connect through is enough. [Inyuki, Dec 14 2012]
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Annotation:
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// in excess of $2.00 per minute // |
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Really? I admit to being economically naive, but how
come i see international calls constantly being
advertised in telephone call shops (don't know what
they're called) at a few pence per minute? I realise
there
must be a catch somewhere, but what is it? |
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By "Linguistic Minorities", I mean the global minorities. |
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E.g., the Chinese wouldn't get this, because they are not a global minority. |
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E.g., the Estonian people would, because there are less than 1 million of them. |
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What's to stop me making up my own language? Are there
fluent speakers of every minority language on Earth
monitoring calls to ensure nobody's trying to scam Ma Bell? |
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//What's to stop me making up my own language?// |
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You would have to show your passport, and if your country's official language falls into the category of rare languages, you would qualify for a free cell-phone calls *to that country. |
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You would NOT be able to make free calls to locations other than your home country. |
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// Are there fluent speakers of every minority language on Earth monitoring calls // |
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Yes. There are currently for other organisations doing this, besides us. |
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// to ensure nobody's trying to scam Ma Bell? // |
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No. That's not why they're doing it. Nor are we. |
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// globalization threatens human cultural diversity // |
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Not half as much as we do, Sunny Jim ... |
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Since VoIP already delivers "free" international calls to anyone with an internet connection, we suggest that this is Baked and Widely Known To Exist. |
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// You would have to show your passport, and if
your country's official language falls into the category of
rare languages, you would qualify for a free cell-phone
calls *to that country.
// |
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So this is a benifit for actual minority immigrants, not
speakers of
minority languages. If I spoke Gaelic or Pashtun, it wouldn't
apply to me because I'm American. For that matter, it
wouldn't apply to any speakers of those languages, since
neither of them are the official language in any of the
countries in which they are spoken. Neither would it
benefit speakers of Latin, a so-called dead language, or
Esperanto, an invented (and very silly) language meant to
unify people of different nationalities (a redundant effort,
since that's what English is for). |
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This isn't really a
program that promotes the continuance of minority
languages, it just gives people from teeny-tiny countries
to call home more often. |
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Probably most minority languages are not official
languages anywhere. |
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As a rule, if a language is the official language of a
sovereign country, it's not generally at risk of
disappearing (some dialects of gaelic in Ireland and
Scotland possibly excepted). |
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The ones that are at risk are the ones that are only
spoken by a few hundred or a few dozen people
within a country. |
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I wonder if this counts for phone sex, if people do that any more. Because you know that would burn thru billions in no time. Maybe the prospect of taxpayer supported phone sex would encourage people to learn these dialects and help decrease their rarity. One could need volunteer monitors (from the UN?) to listen in and make sure the exchanges were not contaminated with regular Polish words or the like. |
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