[At-Large] [NA-Discuss] Action Items

[Danny Younger]

With regard to the Draft Operating Principles point #4
that states "Public documents will be produced in
English and French", I would like to know why a
decision was made not to include Spanish.

I'm told that Canada's population is currently about
33 million (with Wikipedia reporting that "roughly 31%
of Canadian citizens are French-speaking).  That
translates into around 10 million speakers of French. 
As of the last U.S. Census, America had 1,700,000
French speakers.  Combined figures would therefore
total around 12 million French speakers in the region.

Spanish speakers in the U.S. totaled a little more
than 17 million in the year 2000 and everyone knows
that the U.S. has been inundated lately with illegal
immigrants from South of the border.  Clearly, Spanish
is a language used in the North American region to a
greater degree than French.  

Let me also remind everyone that in Puerto Rico (part
of ICANN's North American Region) the dominant
language spoken is Spanish.

Reference documents: 
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Canadian
http://www.icann.org/montreal/geo-regions-topic.htm




       
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