Poll: One world language?
- Thread starter tkioz
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In my opinion, the idea of a "world language" is stupid. Everyone should have the right to speak in whatever language they want and practice their own cultural beliefs. Trying to make everyone speak one language is in essence forcing them to give up a part of their identity and what makes them unique.
Another reason I don't like this idea is because it is usually held by english speakers who are usually too lazy to learn another language and misguidedly believe that if everyone was the same as them there would be less war and division, which isn't entirely true. The English language and ideals have been forced on other cultures and people before- as was done through the british colonial empire. I know that my views here sound rather anglophobic but the same can be said of other languages like french and spanish which have both been forced upon various other people around the world not to mention their parallels to welsh and gaelic- such as breton, catalan and basque.
I would also like to add there is no such thing as a useless language- you seem to believe welsh and gaelic are dying out but this isnt entirely true, the welsh language is now spoken by more people than ever and gaelic is still spoken in many areas of ireland and scotland. Languages are not useless just because you can't use them across the wider world- it is enough for them to be spoken by their own peoples.
Thank you.
Another reason I don't like this idea is because it is usually held by english speakers who are usually too lazy to learn another language and misguidedly believe that if everyone was the same as them there would be less war and division, which isn't entirely true. The English language and ideals have been forced on other cultures and people before- as was done through the british colonial empire. I know that my views here sound rather anglophobic but the same can be said of other languages like french and spanish which have both been forced upon various other people around the world not to mention their parallels to welsh and gaelic- such as breton, catalan and basque.
I would also like to add there is no such thing as a useless language- you seem to believe welsh and gaelic are dying out but this isnt entirely true, the welsh language is now spoken by more people than ever and gaelic is still spoken in many areas of ireland and scotland. Languages are not useless just because you can't use them across the wider world- it is enough for them to be spoken by their own peoples.
Thank you.
I hope there won't be a world language until we've colonized other planets. Diversity of language is important, because languages cater to different societies. For instance, in the Eskimo languages, there's a lot of words for snow, and since they have that, they can talk about it in different ways in which we cannot.
It is going to take LOONG! We Finns are fighting over should swedish be taught as a mandatory language in Finnish schools even it is minority language and very few people don't want to learn it. We are fighting over that because we want to speak only Finnish in our schools and you think we will start dancing in the drum of one world language.
Meh, ain't going to happen, not as long as hebrew, Arabic, chinese and some forms of japanese as a language are connected to a religion. And for a one world language we would need one world school system that would about same standards... Good luck with that...
Meh, ain't going to happen, not as long as hebrew, Arabic, chinese and some forms of japanese as a language are connected to a religion. And for a one world language we would need one world school system that would about same standards... Good luck with that...
You probably know this anyway, but that's just how GW represent it to give the feel of the language as opposed to the actual words used.Valkyrie101 said:
On topic, I'll go for English.
I don't know about that to be honest, my grandfather use to say that if the Russian had spoke English the cold war would have been a lot worse; having communism being sold by a "foreign" people hindered its uptake, at least that was his theory, people are more likely to adopt ideas coming from a similar culture, it's easier for an Australian to take an idea from an American for example, then it was a Mexican to take one from a Indonesian.Jonci said:
Hehe. Not too difficult.zala-taichou said:
Anyone who learned English as a second language knows how wrong that is...
Spanish is already the most used language, why isn't it in the poll?
err you do know I'm not actually talking imposing English on anyone right? I'm talking about natural cultural evolution, the world is getting more and more interconnected, I honestly think if we give it a century or two Europe wont even have countries anymore, rather provinces of the EU, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.alliedlama said:
As for being too lazy to learn another language, I speak four. English, French (very rusty), Japanese (not as rusty, but getting there I think, I need to use it more), and Gunditjmara (the traditional language of where I was born).
This thread isn't about forcing anyone to do anything, but rather a debate about the merits of a global language.
Personally I think in a perfect future a thousand years from now most if not all of the major languages are still around with 3 related synthetic languages providing the middle ground; basic lingua (trade, very basic, think pigeon English), Lingua (every day English, for conversations, novels, etc), and high lingua (for science and philosophy). Everyone is mandated to at least learn basic, but most people would learn the middle ground, and only those that need it learn the high version.
We're getting close to the point where we totally understand how the language centres of our brains work, and once we do we can design a language that will be easy to use and learn.
English is the technical and business language. It's got a pretty good head start on the major influencing factors. But that doesn't mean that a universal language won't incorporate others.
I speak English so i would likely say that but maybe mandarin because if you just go by percentages, the most people speak that in the world, therefore the fewest would have to learn it.
I like diversity in our world though so it would be a real tragedy if there was only 1 universal language.
Latin would be quite cool also... but barely anyone speaks it at all so the majority would have to learn it.
I like diversity in our world though so it would be a real tragedy if there was only 1 universal language.
Latin would be quite cool also... but barely anyone speaks it at all so the majority would have to learn it.
I know, but (to my knowledge) there's no evidence as to what the actual language is like. Not certain on that though, and there are plenty of different dialects (as well as whole different languages).scumofsociety said:
