But this 'Mother
Tongue' business has me going."
"I thought it would," was the reply. "But it's not so hard if you
remember a few things, particularly that the language of a country is
not always spoken by the greatest number of its inhabitants. Now the
mother tongue of Wales is Welsh, but a large proportion of the people do
not speak Welsh. Thus an English-speaking Welshman's card would be
punched 'OL,' meaning Other Language, or the language next in
importance to the mother language of the country."
"On that basis," said Hamilton, "if the second most important language
of Denmark is German a card that was punched 'Den' for the country would
have to be punched 'OL' if the person whose census was registered had
spoken German as his native tongue, but 'LC' if he had spoken Danish,
which is the native tongue of the country. But I should think there
would be some cases that would not come under that rule."
"There are--a few," the foreman replied, "but the way in which those are
to be punched will be noted on the schedule by the schedule editors."
"Some schedules need a good deal of editing, I suppose," exclaimed
Hamilton thoughtfully.
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