Helping projects and companies make consistent, responsible choices to remove harmful language
As part of the #BlackLivesMatter protests of Summer 2020, I looked to the IETF to recirculate a draft on racist terminology in technical standards that I had co-authored in 2019.
When most people think of Mexico, the first thing that comes to mind is Spanish, the language of daily life, government, education and the media. And yes, Spanish is dominant, spoken by the vast majority of the country’s 120 million people. But here’s the story that often goes untold: Mexico is not just a Spanish-speaking nation. It is a country woven together by a tapestry of over 68 national languages and more than 350 linguistic variants, each one carrying centuries of history, tradition, and identity ( source ).
You can ride a train for two hours in Switzerland and watch the world around you change languages. One moment, your ticket inspector greets you in Swiss German, two stops later, it’s French and by the time you reach Ticino, the rhythm shifts to Italian. Somewhere in the valleys of Graubünden, you might hear Romansh , a language spoken by less than 1% of the population, yet proudly displayed on official signs.