Choosing Your Language

>>But in promoting the use of Gikuyu,
he's agitating, and in awarding him the prize,
the Nobel committee is condoning that agitation.<<

I do not think that writing/publishing in a vernacular or rare language is necessarily agitating. That depends on the content. If it is considered to be agitating and is suppressed as such, regardless of content, that's a clear sign of not just oppression but cultural genocide. Attempts to stamp out a language are evil.

>>I wish I knew for sure that this was a good thing.
Opposing a repressive government is wonderful,
but if this leads to civil war?<<

That decision is up to the people living with the repressive government. It's their choice to submit or resist, and how to do so. Government always has some aspect of consent from the government, whether it is officially acknowledged or not; even tyrants can be overthrown if people get desperate enough to revolt en masse. War should be an absolute last resort, but it is often preferred to obliteration or slavery.

>>It's my understanding that English is used in India
as a common language because adopting any other language
as the national standard language
would be establishing the supremacy of one ethnic group
over the others.<<

English and Hindi both serve that purpose, but yes, English is increasingly popular because Hindi already has a bad reputation for overshadowing smaller languages and causing cultural friction. Either they haven't realized that English has the same problem from a different base, or they don't care because the friction is less than Hindi causes. If ever there was a place that needed a real auxlang, India would be it.

>>Publishing work in a Native American language
would probably limit it to a very small market,
although it should be cost-effective to print
two editions, publishing being what it is these days.<<

Yeah, some of the NA publishers have always done small runs of pamphlets and things that are cheap to produce. What I would really love to see would be half-and-half books, with the original language on one side and the same section in English on the facing page. As for market size, Cherokee has 12,000-22,000 speakers and Lakota has 8000-9000. And those are among the livelier native languages surviving; many are down under three digits or even lower. But Cherokee in particular has been pushing hard for language survival, so there are people who'd buy Cherokee material for that purpose.

>>Ayn Rand talks about destroying the myth of Robin Hood,
and that always annoyed me until I read a Micky Mouse
story about the magic grinder, and realized that what she's talking about
is transcending the Reservation Mentality,
or the Plantation Mentality,
or The Social Security Mentality;
whatever particulars apply in a situation...<<

Ayn Rand has too much of a "devil take the hindmost" philosophy for me to be comfortable with. I like the legend of Robin Hood because he reminds people that it's not okay for lazy, powerful people to squeeze their subordinates to death. Someone will always fight back.

>>but it's not the "Stand up and fight" aspect of Robin Hood
she wanted to destroy; most of her protags are that type.
What she was ranting about in this instance
was the willingness of so many to wait for someone else to stand up for them.<<

Ah, that makes much more sense in this context! It's the kind of thing I consistently tend to miss, because I'm so assertive myself. Thanks for explaining.