Poll: One world language... that isn't yours.

[Betancore]

Well, since Cantonese is my second language, and I can understand a great deal of Mandarin, I voted Chinese. I'm lazy and that would be the easiest thing for me. Wouldn't mind French either, since I can speak a little of it. I'd like to start learning German again, and I guess it wouldn't be so bad, since it's fairly similar to English in some ways.

 

[Kernow Chris]

Again, with Chinese, I used to make that mistake, but there is a subtle difference between "meat/flesh" and "moon":
肉 - the radical form resembles month (&#26376, but the top line is diagonal (top left, bottom right [\], and the bottom line the opposite (bottom left, top right [/]))
月 - the radical is identical to the character

Simplified makes no distinction between the two, decreasing meaning. There was some regard, but the main purpose was to make it easier to write; less focus on meaning, more focus on ease of memorization (which, for me, made it harder to memorize...larger shapes are easier, for me).[/quote]


My point was that under modern simplification, Moon (yue)£¨?© has now become the meat radical, meat (rou) £¨È? so characters that have anything to do with meat (Ð?¬xiong£¬ chest£©£¨Ä?¬ nao£¬ brain£©£¨¸? gebo arm£© all have the moon radical, that is what I meant by simplification being taken into regard for meaning, as a stand alone character Yue means moon, but when used as a radical it means meat. And yeah, there is a certain amount of decreased meaning...

 

[Plinglebob]

Russian or German. A universal language should be one that sounds good when yelled

 

[pirhomaniak]

Swedish, because it would solve the problem of violence around the world.

How can you possibly stay mad at someone who sounds like the Swedish Chef?

Bork! Bork! Bork!

 

[GLo Jones]

oh man, Dutch. All kinds of voting for Dutch. I don't know why, but I love that language, and I don't know how to speak it.

You serious? I'm pretty sure the Dutch language is just a joke that got out of hand.

I say Spanish, as it's the most intuitive for English speakers to learn.

 

[GrinningManiac]

I wish KhoeKhoe was a World Langage. So many awesome clicks

Good Day : !Gui tses

( ! = alvolear (sp?) click)

 

[captainwolfos]

Latin, because no one speaks it any more (at least not in day to day conversation). Anyway, everything would sound so dramatic.

I think I love you. Latin ftw.

I voted German. Medic, anyone?

 

[heartshooter]

there already is a world language, and it IS english.

but using logic, it has to be chinese. there are more than 2 billion chinese speaking people in the world already.

 

[Halceon]

Lojban. Because that is the best language to date.

 

[sb666]

Latin or Japanese

 

[Priddo]

Spanish. Isn't it the 2nd most used?

 

[Macgyvercas]

Japanese. It would give me a legitimate excuse to learn it (which I really would like to).

 

[Queen Michael]

*sings* Learning Japanese, we should be learning Japanese, I really think so!

 

[the1ultimate]

Latin!

If it's good enough for the great philosophers and scientists, it's good enough for the whole world.

 

[skeliton112]

German or Russian. I voted German. I love gutteroal (idk how to spell it, like rough, that word) languages.

 

[Gardenia]

English is not my primary language, so I'm going for that.

 

[Leviathan_]

Where's the option for English?

Jeez, OP sure is ignorant thinking that everyone on the Escapist has English as their main language.

From the list, I'd choose German. Just because it's sounds badass.

 

[skeliton112]

A world language would:
have to have an alphabet (not be character based; see Chinese/Japanese)
not be tonal (see Chinese/Korean(?))
have to be written explicitly (all elements of a word appear in writing; see Arabic for how not to)
have few or no "silent" letters in writing
have one or very few ways of forming plurals (see Arabic as an example of how not do this)
not have femininity/masculinity of nouns
have as few conjugations of verbs within tenses as possible

I can't think of any languages that fit this.

I rather like masculine/feminine nouns. Gives a nice flow to the language. Rather melodic.

 

[Blue Musician]

Hola senioretta?

I think that's Italian or Portuguese. "Senioretta" isn't a Spanish word.

OT: Russian, Japanese or Gibberish would be my choices.