Poll: One world language?

[tkioz]

Lots of languages are dying off, you just need to like at the UK and the huge amounts of money they are spending to "save" languages like Gaelic and Welsh (?) to see that, but do you think we're moving towards a single one world language and would that be a good thing?

If so, which language should / will it be? Mandarin and Cantonese are both spoken by a lot of people, but then you've got English which is pretty much the de facto "lingua franca" (and isn't that a funny phrase when used in this context) of the business and digital world at the moment.

Or should we develop an artificial language like Esperanto (only you know better...)?

Um Op, are you ok?

First, why would hindi mandarin and japanese be up there? All three are confusing languages that have not been refined to base characters (like english and french, spanish latin/ greek based languages have) Though hindi would be the best out of those three, it is still way too illogical and hard to learn for it to be a world language.

Second, You put up French... why? who speaks French...? and who speaks Spanish? Compare, and you will see that there are a half a billion native speakers in Spanish, hundreds of times greater than that of French, even with non native speakers. There is no reason for French to be up there.

Third, while english is the current "lingua franca" it is not a very efficient and easy language to learn compared to others like Spanish, and Latin. I can see why you put that up there though.

Fourth, and final, Why, for the sake of all things logical and intelligent, did you NOT put up Latin.

Latin is the supreme of all languages on earth, by far the easiest and best for all mankind. This language can be easily picked up by all speakers of indo-european languages, and be more easily picked up by people who speak mandarin and Cantonese.

Lets go in order.

1) The poll isn't what would be the best, but what is the most likely; Mandarin and Hindi are spoken by a lot of people, Japanese was included (and I said this in an earlier post) because of a slight bias I have from growing up in Australia during the 80s/90s when everyone assumed Japan was going to become the net great economic power house, and everyone was pushing for Japanese to be taught to kids.

2a) You'd actually be surprised at the number of countries that speak French, like the English the French had a large empire and a lot of countries still have that heritage.

2b) The lack of Spanish is an oversight, I'm Australian, so I have had very little exposure to Spanish, if I was from North America I might have included it, but I honestly didn't think about it, because my nation trades a lot with Asian nations so they came into my mind quicker then Spanish did. So oversight.

3) Again it's not a matter of what is the best, or the easiest, but the most likely; English as it stands is very wide spread as a secondary language.

4) Latin... do you actually speak Latin? There is a reason it died out, a wonderful language that should never be forgotten, but for every day use? No way in hell; it's also a ***** to learn. Considering there are no native speakers (that is someone who learnt it before another language) for it, we'd be far better of inventing a new synthetic language.

 

[3aqua]

English not only because its my only language its also has more words then any other language and is a concoction of french german latin and Italian

 

[ilion]

I prefer the Romance languages but English will serve... for now.

 

[Del-Toro]

Imperial Gothic of course.

I should probably brush up on my High Gothic I suppose. I don't want to sound like a commoner after all.

OT: English, since that's already everywhere. Chinese maybe, since they are poised to take over.

 

[MolotoK]

My native language is German but I have to agree that English will certainly be the world language.
It's already lingua franca in international business, science, engineering and most parts of internet and it's the most widely spoken language in the developed world.

It also has the advantage of being fairly simple to learn and even uses an unmodified 26-letter latin alphabet. (Most other languages in Europe have added a few letters to the latin alphabet)

 

[Koganesaga]

Hope it's Japanese, it's so fast fluid with a rich back story.

 

[Thundero13]

Why didn't you put Spanish as an option?

 

[Sacman]

math is generally accepted as the universal human language..that and music.

im all for communicating in binary symphonies.

Binary Solo!
...

 

[Sacman]

Ignore Me!!!

 

[wizzerd229]

can't we just communicate by waving our dicks?

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

I hope it's not English, it's a terribly imprecise language really. I'll take French or German over English any day. Not that I speak either of those fluently. I think it may end up being one of the Asian languages like Mandarin just because there are so many people that speak it. Honestly I have no idea.

 

[c008644]

Binary.

 

[Ampersand]

Of course it would be a good thing. Conflicts would be so much easier to resolve if we all literally spoke the same language.
However the one language will probably not be a modern language. Languages evolve in much the same way that life forms do (except much faster) and the language used centuries(which is probably how long this will take) from now will likely be unrecognisable from what we use now.

 

[tkioz]

Why didn't you put Spanish as an option?

I've answer that question 3 times now... just scroll up a bit.

 

[Kuroneko97]

I don't think we'll have any "world language anytime soon. That's my opinion. If in the next few years I don't have to learn a language because they already know English, well, you guys were right. But I doubt that will happen in the next few decades.

 

[ninjajoeman]

one "world language" would be very cool.
i'm german, but english sounds way cooler and isn't hard to learn, so i think english would be a great world language.

really? english sounds cooler than german? and it's easier?
hmm i figured our (U.S.) english had too many colloquialisms and turns-of-phrase to be viable. so many people who immigrate here claim that it is very difficult... guess they're the minority?

was that a pun?

 

[Zeema]

We should learn ELvish yeah that would be cool

 

[Bruin]

Latin.

It's not that hard to learn.

Nearly everybody has latin language roots.

It wouldn't be that big of a transition.