A chronicler d’exception, Gustave Flaubert, tells how during the European riots of 1848 there were people in Paris, the city that had triggered the revolutionary rumble, who posed the problem of finding a language capable of becoming a means of communication for the new Europe: p. 537

Yet the equality among nations that was to be assured by reviving a dead language did not mean rendering individuals equal too. Latin was widespread throughout Europe but was always known by the same social classes: aristocrats, intellectuals and priests. In each country, it served to exclude the majority of the population from religious, scientific, civil and political rites. More than French, and certainly more than English or German, Latin brought together the members of the com- munity of letters but at the cost of excluding the great majority of the population. p. 538

Democratic politics is politics in the vernacular. The average citizen feels at ease only when he discusses political questions in his own language. As a general rule, only elites are fluent in more than one language and have the chance to maintain and develop their linguistic skills continu- ously and feel at ease discussing political questions in different languages in a multilingual atmosphere. Moreover, political communication has a large ritual component and these ritual forms of communication are characteristic of a language. Even if a person understands a foreign lan- guage in the technical sense, he may be incapable of understanding political debates, if he has no knowledge of these ritual elements. For these and other reasons, we can believe, as a general rule, that the more the political debate takes place in the vernacular, the greater the participation (Kymlicka, 2001, p. 214). p. 542

But what about Volapuk??? p. 542

On a planet on which one-third of the population is still illiterate, it is undoubt- edly innovative to think in terms of institutionalising a sort of bilingualism. It comes as a surprise p. 553

In India and Europe, multilingualism can already be seen in action (see Laitin, 1997; Mamadouh, 2002; Van Parijs, 2005 for Europe; and Annamalai, 2001; Chandholke, 2005 for India). The British in Europe and the Hindis in India are among the privileged who can afford to speak a single language, whereas many others have to speak at least two (English as lingua franca and their own vernac- ular language), and others already speak three (like the Catalans who need to speak Spanish as the dominant language of their state, and English as the dominant European and international language). I do not intend to argue that linguistic access is open to all: as Kymlicka rightly points out, elites are still at an advantage and, in a globalised world, also enjoy a linguistic privilege. The development of common languages will inevitably prove advantageous to some groups than to others, although this disparity is something that public policies should try to elimi- nate. It is far too easy to make a society more egalitarian by making polyglots illi- terate, but an enlightened social policy must attempt to make the illiterate polyglot. p. 553

Notes p. 553