what would you make Earth's official language?
- Thread starter Mr. Omega
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English. Partially because I'm lazy, partially because I'm a misanthrope who wants everyone to go through the misery of learning this wretched, contorted abomination of a language.
Aruba flip narf? Pompa, ipsoo?likalaruku said:
But apparently Simlish does contain traces of most major languages, so it would actually be a very neutral and quite interesting language to go with. For that reason: Simlish too!
The main argument for it I'd pick is that it's also the bastard language cobbled together from other languages. It also has a huge amount of colloquialism (hence the saying "english is the easiest language to learn, but the hardest to master") so it would come naturally to a lot of non-english speakers because there'd be some inherent familiarity.CM156 said:
But on the weekends, Klingon.
Boring Answer: English.
Fun Answer: Flag Waving.
I'd love to see people walking around with flags in their hands, flailing about trying to communicate with one another.
Fun Answer: Flag Waving.
I'd love to see people walking around with flags in their hands, flailing about trying to communicate with one another.
English, but not before all the uncannily intuitive words (like schadenfraude and betsubara) are adopted from other languages.
English. It's the best language I've been forced to study, and I dislike them all. I have had Dutch, German and French(Dutch being my native tongue) and English is just easier and the most sophisticated of the lot. Almost everyone high up speaks it, and you can't tell me that Brits, Australians and Canadians have bad accents. I LOVE THOSE ACCENTS 
Hopefully, with the perfection of machine translation in 30 or so years, we won't have to bother with a world-wide language.
At the moment... as much as it pains me to say it... english. Most scientific papers are written in English, as are most medical texts. It's difficult to escape the legacy of the fact that English is the language of science. Most scientists around the world speak English - they have to! To read the books, to understand the terminology.
It's also really, really, really difficult to translate some of the terms from Latin/Greek into another language. How would you translate Bilirubin Diglucuronide or glucuronyltransferase into Chinese? Or Arabic? You'd have to invent an entirely new set of words, and most scientists, even ones who only speak english as a second language, can't be bothered learning a whole new set of words to replace the English/Latin/Greek words.
Malaysia, the country I was born in, tried to change all the English scientific words to Malay words in the 50's and the 60's - this involved changing Nuclear to Nuklear. It was a completely pointless endeavour they spent millions on for the sake of 'national' pride. They abandoned it, because at the end of the day, they weren't fooling anyone by changing C to K and claiming it as a Malay word.
In a fair world, we'd all switch to either Hindi or Mandarin or Spanish. But the world isn't fair. English, from a technological, scientific, medical viewpoint makes the most sense as the world language.
At the moment... as much as it pains me to say it... english. Most scientific papers are written in English, as are most medical texts. It's difficult to escape the legacy of the fact that English is the language of science. Most scientists around the world speak English - they have to! To read the books, to understand the terminology.
It's also really, really, really difficult to translate some of the terms from Latin/Greek into another language. How would you translate Bilirubin Diglucuronide or glucuronyltransferase into Chinese? Or Arabic? You'd have to invent an entirely new set of words, and most scientists, even ones who only speak english as a second language, can't be bothered learning a whole new set of words to replace the English/Latin/Greek words.
Malaysia, the country I was born in, tried to change all the English scientific words to Malay words in the 50's and the 60's - this involved changing Nuclear to Nuklear. It was a completely pointless endeavour they spent millions on for the sake of 'national' pride. They abandoned it, because at the end of the day, they weren't fooling anyone by changing C to K and claiming it as a Malay word.
In a fair world, we'd all switch to either Hindi or Mandarin or Spanish. But the world isn't fair. English, from a technological, scientific, medical viewpoint makes the most sense as the world language.
English with a Boston accent. The accent that turns me to mush when guys have it.
Also Irish, Irish is nice too.
Also Irish, Irish is nice too.
