>>For example: New York was called New Amsterdam before they selled it to the english. Once up a time there was a vote, about what should be the language to speak in the east of the US (in the time of Peter Stuivesant). Dutch had only one vote less than english...

>I beg to differ, Walter, Indonesia was Dutch *East* Indies. West Indies refers to the Caribbean area...

OOPs. misread the sentence. The VOC, which stands for something like "The United East-Indain Company" is well known here. However I don't know for sure there was a VWC. I'm ashamed that I don't know this important piece of hystory :-)

>You mean we almost could be speaking in your native tongue in the U.S.? A small twist of fate makes a big difference sometimes :)

Yep, It would probably turned out to be only for a part of the US, But it could have been. For Example: Afrikaans (the south african language) is actually old dutch. The difference between the two can be compared with the difference between US english and British English.

Walter,