Heh, I remember reading an old Asimov short story told from the point of view of some aliens. They landed on Earth and had talks with the world leaders, who spoke esperanto. Look how things have changed.
what would you make Earth's official language?
- Thread starter Mr. Omega
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Oh dear god no. My mother teaches finnish to immigrants and if her words are anything to go by it's a complete pain in the ass to learn. All the words bend in an endless amount of ways that often don't make any sense, we might as well go with mandarin.BENZOOKA said:
I mean the longest finnish word I know is "olemassaolemattomuudestaansakkin". THAT HAS TWO WORDS IN IT. TWO. The normal form of the word only has 19 letters. (it means "from/about his/her/it's inexistence as well")
I'd say english. It's not THAT hard to learn, it sounds pretty plesent and it's fun to sing in.
Plus for all intents and purpouses it IS earths official language allready.
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Parseltongue yet, especially to hear everyone trying repeatedly to say one word. And then there's that one friend that's fluent.
English would have to win for all the reasons already stated.
I'd agree with Fudge40, as a C# programmer, and we'd be able to let some of the Java programmers in, and look down on VB.Net programmers.
English would have to win for all the reasons already stated.
I'd agree with Fudge40, as a C# programmer, and we'd be able to let some of the Java programmers in, and look down on VB.Net programmers.
I am mainly Afrikaans, but my English is still better than 80% of anyone who attended a public school. I've actually thought of a similar idea and maybe try a mash up of the European languages and maybe a few others, like Afrikaans.
I've always found it odd that the English language doesn't have separate words for your "close" family, i.e. mom, dad etc. and the people with whom you share a recognized common ancestor. Also, European languages are quite beautiful and fill some serious gaps too.
I've always found it odd that the English language doesn't have separate words for your "close" family, i.e. mom, dad etc. and the people with whom you share a recognized common ancestor. Also, European languages are quite beautiful and fill some serious gaps too.
Probably be English, seeing as in a lot of other countries children are taught English as a second language at a young age, where as most English speaking children never learn another language.
Esperanto was a good idea in theory but it was doomed to fail because it has no culture behind it, it was grown in a lab.
Esperanto was a good idea in theory but it was doomed to fail because it has no culture behind it, it was grown in a lab.
Icelandic would become the supreme language among mankind, for it is an amazing language. If for some reason I couldn't do that, I would either make it Swahili, Finnish, or Ancient Sumerian.
EDIT: But in all seriousness for a hypothetical question, I would either choose to make a new language or to simply refuse the power to change the linguistic map.
EDIT: But in all seriousness for a hypothetical question, I would either choose to make a new language or to simply refuse the power to change the linguistic map.
English for the reason that it is the only one that I feel comfortable with. Not American English though, even as an American I have issues with the way my country (and to a lesser extent myself) speaks.
English - under the condition that all bastard American spellings are abolished.
I'm looking at you, -our, -re, -ce, -ogue, and -ise words. Don't be pushed around like that!
I'm looking at you, -our, -re, -ce, -ogue, and -ise words. Don't be pushed around like that!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! None of my friends believed me when I told them it existed, but I knew... Somewhere out there in the world, people were learning this crap. I took 5 years of German and still couldn't tell you when the hell I was supposed to use Dative.ImmortalDrifter said:
OT: Something with a phonetic alphabet, so nothing from East Asia. I would also prefer something where I'm not memorizing how to conjugate verbs for different genders, and keeping 1 word for "the." English is the only one that I know of that fits these rules, though the grammar could probably do with some updating and revisions to spelling so that read and read aren't the same damn word.