One World Language

[BreakfastSurreal]

I read this somewhere and thought it would be a good topic for debate.

Since the demise of Latin in the 15th century the world has lacked an official language of communication. The EU has two working languages (French and English) while the UN has six (French, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, English and Spanish). Many have since argued that it would be easier and contribute to global harmony if we could agree on one standard language. In fact L. L. Zamenhof created the language Esperanto specifically for this purpose at the end of the 19th century. However since then many have viewed English as a de-facto global language with local dialects like Singlish (generating from singapore) being spoken in many corners of the globes. The advance of English is resisted within many cultures who see language as an essential component of identity as well as a key tool for accessing the history and literatures of individual peoples.


I see the pros and cons of this topic...the good outweighs the bad I think, it would be way more conveniant for people to move around the globe and work in other countries and such. Also, some things are always lost in translation..and translation is time consuming and expensive. On the same token though, if we all switched to a unified language I think a lot of cultures would lose their diversity and lots of words would lose their literary distinction...for example, in the US we speak english, as well as in the UK...but because of different cultural differences, our english is NOT the same as theirs. There are words made up or used differently in each culture.

 

[All Else Failed]

That would be handy.

 

[Reaver]

I think we should all speak basic.

Yeah, I'm a Star Wars nerd. I know.

 

[EmperorKupcake]

I think we should all speak basic.

Yeah, I'm a Star Wars nerd. I know.

Isn't Basic essentially English? Since they were speaking English in the movies, its safe to say that basic = english. But even in Star Wars, you have species that refuse to speak basic, whether its impossible, or they just choose not to.

But yeah, one global language would be beneficial in uniting the Earth as one system, instead of many different systems working together. We would get stuff done better and improve as a planet, instead of individual countries. But hey, political differences make that very difficult.

 

[sharpies]

English is one of the newest languages on the planet - less than one thousand years old - which makes it both a good choice & a bad choice.

Being young English is still evolving, new words are added to it, almost daily - some are made up words like fax & some are from another language like restaurant. This allows for a vey flexible language able to adapt to almost any situation or need.

On the other hand, being young means that there has not been time to lose words that are replicated, words like port, case, bag but it also means that there has not been enough time to properly develop rules & you end up with words like gaol & jail, colour & color.

Still it does seem to me that English is becoming more & more universal, I think it's mostly because most of the Corporations & big business speak English & if you want to do business with the money people, then English is it.

The Internet is also another reason for it's probable dominance.

Allan

 

[dt3]

I know English is the official language for all Air Traffic Controllers/pilots...

 

[Tegan]

If there is ever a one world order, English will be it's language...but frankly, we can't even get people in the US to agree that English is our official language. People are so touchy about their culture, they are almost offended when you ask them to learn English.

I agree though, everyone in the world speaking the same language would solve a TON of problems, just at the communication level, but it won't ever happen. Not while we have people killing their fellow man over religion, politics, greed and shoes.