Single world language

Post Reply New Topic

Why are there so many languages in use in the world? Why not standardize on one? It would be so much more efficient everybody could communicate with everybody else without having to translate. In my experience NTs are against this idea, why?

Android

We already do to a large extent for the business purposes and that language is English. But most people still speak their own languages too.

But why waste time learning / using two when you could just use one?

While it would be nice to have a single language - no more Spanish class! - it'd be pratically impossible to do. It has, in fact, been attempted. I can't remember off hand what it was called, but it started with an E. (And no, it wasn't English. ) It didn't work.
The problem with having only one langauge is deciding which language to pick. If you want to use English, some people will be very offended. If you want to make a whole new language, everyone would have to learn it. It just wouldn't work. And even if you ever did get a standardized langauge, and got people to learn it, there'd be the problem of naming new objects. Different people in different places would make up their own name for something. (It would literally take years to translate all of the languages into one single one. There's thousands upon thousands of words that no one really uses much but would be missed. Acorn, for example, might be looked over, and then people in different places would give it different names. It'd be confusing.) Also, there's always going to be some people who will make up their own language, just to do it, or to be different.
Language is a culture, a custom, and not about to be changed. I would like a single language but it's just not possible.

It's called Esperanto. It was designed to be an international second language learned in addition to a national language. This is probably more practicable than making everyone speak the same native language. However, getting enough people to speak it is still very difficult. Esperanto only has 100,000 to 2 million speakers today. I learned to speak a little of it online.

Kiu alia povas paroli Esperanto?

"If you want to use English, some people will be very offended"

Why? I can see no reason for this.

Certain people are very proud of their origin, including their language, and if any language had to be set as the only language in the world, they would want it to be theirs.
It's kind of like how some people are convinced their kid is better than all the others. If one kid had to be chosen as the best kid of the class, and it wasn't their kid, they would be very offended. ("But Suzie/Ann/Johnny/whatever is the best kid in the class. He/she is so smart, and such a cute kid, ect.") It's something they can appreciate and know and love, and they don't want to change.
Also, if you study another langauge, you have to admit that English is a very complex language. There is an exception to every single rule in the English langauge (even this one, as it's an exception to the exception rule). Other languages have a set pattern for verb tenses, and don't have things like deer and fish and sheep. (You don't say deers and fishes and sheeps, but people new to the language would not realize it.)

Having a single world language is a crazy and useless idea.There is nothing wrong or bad about the variety of languages.

Agreed. As I said earlier, English is the de facto language for most business purposes.

Unless you go for cultural cleansing you're not going to get everyone speaking the same language. It would be impossible, anyway.

I think it would be a bad idea. Taking away all the languages and replacing them with English would take away the originality of some of the countries. India as a matter of fact has about 19 languages!

Disagree. I love the variety of languages and the way that some languages can express in a single word what others need entire sentences for. And vice-versa, many languages express things as beautiful phrases.

"Speak english or Die!"

That was the title of Stormtroopers of Death's only albumn.

I voted that yes, there should be a single world language. But only because:

1. English has of course over time become that language anyway.
2. I've long been interested in the concept of a single world language, and which language that should be.

Esperanto has been mentioned above, and it's a language I speak to some extent. It is one of many attempts at what are called international auxiliary languages, most of which were proposed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However none were anywhere near as successful as Esperanto; Esperanto, while neutral and grammatically regular, nonetheless proved nowhere near as successful as natural languages such as English.

This is one of many pages on the web linking to sites on international auxiliary languages, if you want to see some examples of the sort of languages that have been postulated: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5037/

There are three languages in particular that, in my view, are suitable for the purpose of international language.

1. Latin, as it has already been used as an international language. Quite a neutral language, more so than most any language. This is because it was not associated with any one nation, having been a common language for Europe at least (for over 1000 years after the fall of the Roman Empire at that).

After the Asperger society meeting on Monday, four of us went to a pub afterwards and the question of international language came up. Latin was brought up, and its grammatical rules like noun declensions and case endings were brought up which make it a complex language. However Latin changed a lot over the years, and went through different stages. So Vulgar Latin, which did away with the declensions and case endings, was suggested as a suitable language to fit the bill.

2. Hebrew (or any related Semitic language such as Aramaic). With a combination of interest in the international language concept, and interest in the Bible which I believe to be the Word of God, I believe also that Hebrew is likely to have been the original language of mankind. The Book of Genesis has the Tower of Babel story, prior to which there was one language and one speech. A read of the first ten chapters of Genesis will see that the Hebrew language was used to name people and things before language was separated out at the Tower of Babel. Not just because the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but because e.g. Adam was named from the Hebrew for man, Eve Hebrew for life, and even vocabulary terms such as 'ground' (Hebrew adamah) are related to the word for man, because man came from the ground (Gen 2:7).

If not Hebrew, Aramaic is also a likely language to be the world's original. In the area that man originally settled i.e. Shinar (Babylonia), we know the language of this area was Aramaic. For this reason Aramaic as the original language was Noah Webster's view, as outlined in his dictionary of 1828 which I have a copy of. In it, many English words are traced to cognate words in Hebrew, Aramaic and related languages. This I would consider to be a valid view.

3. English. Started off as the language of one particular nation, England. However it has now evolved to become as culturally and politically neutral a language as Latin, if not more so.

This is a link to the text of Mario Pei's famous book about the language problem, and possible solutions to it. It presents arguments for and against a number of natural and auxiliary languages. http://miresperanto.narod.ru/biblioteko/pei.htm