Are You a Frivvle or a Jibber? And Who Cares?
Have you ever been told that we need to make English the official language of the United States? That bilingual nations are inherently problematic? Gather round, and listen to a story: Once upon a time there were two monolingual populations, the Frivvles and the Jibbers, living within a single nation . These groups mostly ignored each other; the only real problem arose when a member of one monolingual culture (the Frivvles) wanted to interact with members of another monolingual culture (the Jibbers) but couldn't. In such a scenario, the solution seems very clear: any Frivvle that wants to interact with a Jibber will learn Jibberish, and any Jibber that wants to interact with a Frivvle will learn Frivvlesh. They should coexist peacefully, right? Ah, I can hear you objecting--what if one culture is more powerful than the other? What if a vast majority of this society speak Frivvlesh, leaving speakers of Jibberish to cluster together and either A) interact only with other J...