Poll: One world language?
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English is basically the world's language anyway. It's stolen from so many others (Welsh, German, French... Etc) that it's established itself.
While agreeably it's the single most annoyingly hard language to get a grip on... I don't see it falling out of use very soon. Nor do I hope for it to be neutered down, there's enough of that going on already with stuff like 'U' instead of You, people not caring to learn the difference between 'their, they're and there' and so on.
While I am partial to french, Russian and Japanese... It'd be impossible at this point to curb Europe, Oceania, Japan and North America from using it as a primary or at least secondary language.
While agreeably it's the single most annoyingly hard language to get a grip on... I don't see it falling out of use very soon. Nor do I hope for it to be neutered down, there's enough of that going on already with stuff like 'U' instead of You, people not caring to learn the difference between 'their, they're and there' and so on.
While I am partial to french, Russian and Japanese... It'd be impossible at this point to curb Europe, Oceania, Japan and North America from using it as a primary or at least secondary language.
I'd have to say Spanish. Its spoken to a good degree of the population of 23 countries and counting, and is most likely going ot be the language taken is high school/middle school/whenever for many a students.
Plus, its easier to write then English.
Also, to point out something about the English language. I'm American, so I'd like to think that i have a good concept of speaking English. And the problem with it being the "one" language, is that its really hard to learn. First, there's two types of "English" (and yeah, I get that its just a lot of renaming and stuff, but if you asked a good portion of Americans what a Watercloset was, you're more then likely to get a blank dead stare), and that can get confusing terminology wise. Also (and more importantly), English is a hard language to write (grammatically that is).
Think of all the rules. I before E, except after C, except in words rhyming with Day, such as weigh neighbor.
Accept/Except
Effect/Affect
Well/good
The silent K and B
The sometimes sixth vowel
Plus sentence structure: Verbs, Adverb, Noun, Adjectives, etc.
When to use periods, colons, semi colons
Quotes (and how to end them)
Citation (and how to do it right, whether by MLA, APA, or other forms of paper structure).
I've seen someone teach an ACTUAL english class (where they teach to foreign individuals), and its insane how hard they have to work. The Language department pretty much all agreed (out of some... 14 languages i think, including Russian, Sanskit, mandarin, French, Spanish, Swahili, and a few other odd number choices of languages) that english is the hardest language to learn, especially if you're trying ot learn it as a second language.
Besides all that, English is the Language of business, but its losing gain there as the US dollar sinks lower and lower in its value.
Plus, its easier to write then English.
Also, to point out something about the English language. I'm American, so I'd like to think that i have a good concept of speaking English. And the problem with it being the "one" language, is that its really hard to learn. First, there's two types of "English" (and yeah, I get that its just a lot of renaming and stuff, but if you asked a good portion of Americans what a Watercloset was, you're more then likely to get a blank dead stare), and that can get confusing terminology wise. Also (and more importantly), English is a hard language to write (grammatically that is).
Think of all the rules. I before E, except after C, except in words rhyming with Day, such as weigh neighbor.
Accept/Except
Effect/Affect
Well/good
The silent K and B
The sometimes sixth vowel
Plus sentence structure: Verbs, Adverb, Noun, Adjectives, etc.
When to use periods, colons, semi colons
Quotes (and how to end them)
Citation (and how to do it right, whether by MLA, APA, or other forms of paper structure).
I've seen someone teach an ACTUAL english class (where they teach to foreign individuals), and its insane how hard they have to work. The Language department pretty much all agreed (out of some... 14 languages i think, including Russian, Sanskit, mandarin, French, Spanish, Swahili, and a few other odd number choices of languages) that english is the hardest language to learn, especially if you're trying ot learn it as a second language.
Besides all that, English is the Language of business, but its losing gain there as the US dollar sinks lower and lower in its value.
There are (obviously) more native speakers of Chinese dialects then any other language. However English is the language of commerce around the world, and that won't exactly be changing anytime soon.zala-taichou said:
English seems to be by far the most diverse language, having concepts and words adopted from all corners of the world. I would have to pick English if I had to pick one language for everyone in the world to speak.
I remember we used to pose this question to our French teacher on a regular basis to get a rise out of him, and now that I've matured a bit and understand the meaning of it I'm inclined to agree with him, because as he put it: "IT WOULD BE A BASTARD LANGUAGE!!!"
Languages die off, and while it is sad to see some of these languages go, it isn't entirely a bad thing.
Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O07ybDec1Gk
However, if there would be one world language, I wouldn't really care what it would be. While I think that English would win out today, it takes several generations for such to happen. It would take at least four generations or so in one family to convert that family to a language, now take that to the hundreds of millions of families in the world today and you now have a conversion process that will take several centuries, after which the language that we try to convert to will be long changed and modified. Think about Shakespeare, his language was the common man's tongue and we have to think twice about simply understanding the language after four centuries of his work being around. Switching to a single world language is a long and painful process, it's much easier to have a few specialists who can translate languages.
Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O07ybDec1Gk
However, if there would be one world language, I wouldn't really care what it would be. While I think that English would win out today, it takes several generations for such to happen. It would take at least four generations or so in one family to convert that family to a language, now take that to the hundreds of millions of families in the world today and you now have a conversion process that will take several centuries, after which the language that we try to convert to will be long changed and modified. Think about Shakespeare, his language was the common man's tongue and we have to think twice about simply understanding the language after four centuries of his work being around. Switching to a single world language is a long and painful process, it's much easier to have a few specialists who can translate languages.
While Mandarin is the most widely spoken in the world (since much of the most populated nation on Earth knows it and only it,) the availability of English teachers worldwide makes it the only viable choice. It won' happen for at least a hundred years, but if it does, it'll be English or an altered form of English.
No Spanish? And I don't understand why you put Japanese on there.
Its hard to say what a world language would be, though I know it probably wouldn't be anything like the languages that we speak now, languages are always changing, for instance, English almost prides itself on the ability to make nouns into verbs (ala Mr. Shakespeare) and languages themselves are always incorporating words of different languages into their own lexicon.
There can also be a great divide when it comes to learning other languages, for instance, those of us that speak English or other Germanic languages (German, Scandinavian languages) can easily learn other Germanic languages and even some of the Romantic languages like Spanish, French or Italian. They both share a lot of similarities and history over the centuries.
Though, a Germanic-First Language speaker would have a much harder time learning something like Mandarin or Cantonese, or even the Slavic languages with their Cyrillic and Kanji alphabets, respectively- not to mention the Arab, Persian, African and Indian languages (there are 7 alone spoken in India) Likewise, though, it would be hard for those Asian-First Language, or other language speakers to learn more Germanic or Romantic languages.
We see more countries having English being taught to their students and employees even, for the sake of the way economics go these days, but we are not seeing the same in the Western world to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean or even Spanish or German, despite all the trade and business done with those allies. Personally, I think that this lack of bilingualism in the Western world is a problem, as we see that learning more than one language is in many ways better for the brain and make other tasks and other problems easier to work out if the brain can already compute in and understand other languages, and because of this- I don't think that English will last the same way that it is today in the coming centuries. If anything, I would think that English would either be slowly replaced or become intertwined with another language where bilingualism was just the norm.
I'm sure the Romans thought that Latin would become the language that everyone would speak due to their influence. They were correct and false in that prediction, though. No one really speaks Latin the same way as it existed during the Imperial Roman times, but just look at the influence that Latin had on just about every language that is spoken in the Western world, from Spanish, Italian, French, English, German, Portuguese. Even the forms of French and Belgian dialects and variations spoken in parts of Africa from the colonization that are becoming their own languages- to something like the Portuguese spoken in Brazil that has become a language of its own, really.
There's a bright future ahead, I think, where language barriers will slowly degrade, but they only degrade to reinforce an entirely different kind of language. I think a trip to the future would begin slowly while at first just trying to understand the things you've missed out on while your language has become much more advanced and interconnected.
Its hard to say what a world language would be, though I know it probably wouldn't be anything like the languages that we speak now, languages are always changing, for instance, English almost prides itself on the ability to make nouns into verbs (ala Mr. Shakespeare) and languages themselves are always incorporating words of different languages into their own lexicon.
There can also be a great divide when it comes to learning other languages, for instance, those of us that speak English or other Germanic languages (German, Scandinavian languages) can easily learn other Germanic languages and even some of the Romantic languages like Spanish, French or Italian. They both share a lot of similarities and history over the centuries.
Though, a Germanic-First Language speaker would have a much harder time learning something like Mandarin or Cantonese, or even the Slavic languages with their Cyrillic and Kanji alphabets, respectively- not to mention the Arab, Persian, African and Indian languages (there are 7 alone spoken in India) Likewise, though, it would be hard for those Asian-First Language, or other language speakers to learn more Germanic or Romantic languages.
We see more countries having English being taught to their students and employees even, for the sake of the way economics go these days, but we are not seeing the same in the Western world to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean or even Spanish or German, despite all the trade and business done with those allies. Personally, I think that this lack of bilingualism in the Western world is a problem, as we see that learning more than one language is in many ways better for the brain and make other tasks and other problems easier to work out if the brain can already compute in and understand other languages, and because of this- I don't think that English will last the same way that it is today in the coming centuries. If anything, I would think that English would either be slowly replaced or become intertwined with another language where bilingualism was just the norm.
I'm sure the Romans thought that Latin would become the language that everyone would speak due to their influence. They were correct and false in that prediction, though. No one really speaks Latin the same way as it existed during the Imperial Roman times, but just look at the influence that Latin had on just about every language that is spoken in the Western world, from Spanish, Italian, French, English, German, Portuguese. Even the forms of French and Belgian dialects and variations spoken in parts of Africa from the colonization that are becoming their own languages- to something like the Portuguese spoken in Brazil that has become a language of its own, really.
There's a bright future ahead, I think, where language barriers will slowly degrade, but they only degrade to reinforce an entirely different kind of language. I think a trip to the future would begin slowly while at first just trying to understand the things you've missed out on while your language has become much more advanced and interconnected.
Having a world language would be absolutely terrible. Lost culture, lost stories, lost diversity. Almost all for a slightly easier economy. What a sad world this is.