Squilookle said:
So the world decides to unify everyone under a common language, but doesn't know how to do it. So, they decide everyone must vote for the language they think would be best that isn't their primary language already. That means for most of you English is out. What would you vote for?
Personally I'd vote for Spanish. That language is simply music to my ears.
Good to see a fellow "Stainless Steel Rat" fan (or so I guess with Esperanto being listed).
Yeas ago I did some reading on socio-linguistic studies. The idea being that people's thoughts and speed of thought is affected by the language they first learn. Some languages being capable of much faster, and more detailed dissemination of information than others, and apparently leading to people who think faster and in more detail.
Where that eventually went I had no idea, but I seem to remember that "German" was at the top of the list for lingual efficiency. Apparently it includes a lot more "specialized" words for complicated concepts than other languages, things like the popular "Schaetenfreude" and the like. If I recall it also pointed to all the german scientists, engineers, and bankers which have been a step ahead of most of the world for a long time (or so it seems) as an example.
English was pretty highly ranked for similar reasons, where most of the "Romance" languages like French, Spanish, Italian, etc... were very middle of the road, as was Japanese though it's reliance on tone was considered to have weakened it somewhat.
I seem to remember that the big losers were various Tribal tongues and obscure languages, including some like Cherokee. The biggest loser of major languages was Chinese (and this was before a lot of the current tensions) largely due to the fact that it's written language was not up to what it's verbal component could sometimes achieve. The problem being that "classically" it's not phonetically based, but rather relies on each word having it's own symbol. I seem to also remember the sheer number of dialects of Chinese was mentioned as being staggering, and as they can melt together in some places it can create a giant mess.
That's how I remember things, so no need to argue with me, the conclusions weren't really mine, and I don't remember all the details.
At the time though it made a lot of sense, not so much because of how it influanced individual thought processes, but also the arguement that efficient communication between members of a society can influance how fast and how well that society advances in the long term.
The arguement involving things like how language could have been a contributing factor to why a lot of tribal cultures remained tribal cultures, the quality of life in places like China (which was not always unified) can vary so greatly along with what is availible in any reason, and similar things.
The Egyptians having formed one of the first known systems of language and writing being one of the first majoe civilizations/world powers because of it, and dominated the entire fertile crescent region. They were themselves more or less replaced over times by the Greeks and Romans whose success and rate of advancement could quite probably be tied to more efficient ways of doing the same things.... etc... etc...
At any rate I know how "German is the best language" sounds in light of "World War II" but again, that was apparently the conclusion by my memory.
the Dutch actually used that name to find out if people weren't Dutch, because nobody could pronounce it 
