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Socoder -> Off Topic -> A world language |
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 10:10 | |
Phoenix
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Will there ever be one, a lingua franca, a universal language which is always used everywhere? Many would say that English is the world language, but that is far from true. I don't speak English when I go to the mall to buy bread, even if I most likely would be understood if I did so. There are a lot of English speakers, but not as many native speakers. All of the other languages still survive, alongside English. On the Internet it is definitely the predominant language, but that's a fairly one-sided group. According to Wikipedia, approximately 1.8 billion people speak English in the world, which is about 28% of the world. Far from a world language, if you ask me. Will there ever come a day when there is only one language in the world, spoken natively everywhere by everyone? |
| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 10:15 | |
Scherererer
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Yeah, you'll all speak American.  Haha, no, but really, I think the thing that will make people speak a unifying language is space travel, but even then, different countries will create their own colonies, and they'll all be speaking different languages, so I don't think that will ever happen. I don't think it matters so much in the end whether we all speak the same language or not, we all pretty well get along, and eventually we'll have amazing translation software so that someone might type into a forum in Swedish, and then another in Polish, and everyone will read the forum in their own language. -=-=- YouTube Twitter Computer Science Series: Logic (pt1) (part 2) (part 3) 2's Complement Mathematics: Basic Differential Calculus 
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 10:20 | |
Jayenkai
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Surely everyone's aware that in the future we all speak in Esperanto, and use Dollarpounds.. Right? Either that, or Klingon.. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 10:37 | |
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Phoenix
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Another interesting thing is that, assuming that the whole world would speak English, there would inevitably be different dialects. It's bad enough today -- does Scottish and Singlish sound similar to you? I have a Danish friend, who says that a certain dialect of Danish has developed in Copenhagen which she can barely understand. Apparently it's a mixture of different languages, with a tint of Danish in it. Soon, the English dialects would perhaps branch away from each other and turn into new languages. |
| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 17:20 | |
Evil Roy Ferguso
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Mi ne kredas tion. I do not think we'll all be speaking one language exclusively any time soon. Esperanto was not meant to be anyone's primary language: the idea was that everybody would learn a couple hundred words of it, since it was easier than learning a natural language, speak it during business with international partners, and then go back home and talk to their wife/kids/etc. in their native tongue. Despite its complexities, English has more or less become the "auxiliary language" that Esperanto aimed to become. Other languages aren't dying, either, although they're going to start sounding progressively funnier if they keep borrowing words from English at this rate. |
| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 17:27 | |
blanko1324
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A world language would ruin my attempt to get rich farming Babelfish...
-=-=- My Twitter
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 17:29 | |
Mog
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Let's all just go back to grunting and beating each other over the head with blunt objects, that certainly conveyed what we were trying to say for the longest. So says I, Mr. Antisocial, who looks for an excuse to hit people whenever he can. -=-=- I am Busy Mongoose - My Website Dev PC: AMD 8150-FX, 16gb Ram, GeForce GTX 680 2gb Current Project: Pyroxene
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 19:28 | |
JL235
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Phoenix  I don't speak English when I go to the mall to buy bread, even if I most likely would be understood if I did so. But as a foreigner in your country I can buy bread, because both I and the bread-keeper speak english. It really depends on what you mean by a universal language. If it's like Esperanto, a universal auxillery language that everyone can use to be able to just communicate and get their point across (like when buying bread), then English easily win. If it's a language that everyone uses as their primary language (i.e. at home with the wife and kids) then Mandarin easily wins. Remember with English it's not so much everyone abroad speeks it, but that at least one person in every shop speaks it. I've been in many McDonalds where when I go to be served they leave and get the English speaking till-master. |
| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 19:49 | |
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mindstorm8191 |
I think that English could become a world language, but not the English that Americans speak. The English language has a lot of words that mean almost the same thing (for example, about verses approximate). The world English would be a much simpler language, leaving out the extra words, so it is easier to pick up. Spelling may change a bit too, to simply make it easier for people to pick up (like sity instead of city). Its hard to say if native English speakers would reduce their total word count; though in recent years an average person's word-count has gone down anyways. Anyone think the same thing? -=-=- Vesuvius web game
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| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 20:33 | |
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JL235
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American english does contain lots of spelling changes to make it simpler. They incorrectly spell colour as color and centre as center. But a lot of people abroad do learn the correct UK English rather then the buggy US version. |
| Fri, 19 Jun 2009, 22:22 | |
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Evil Roy Ferguso
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I would hesitate to say either spelling is superior or inferior. Ultimately, it comes down to a disagreement like little-endianness vs. big-endianness (in the Swift sense, not in the CPU architecture sense) -- it couldn't really matter less and is pointless to debate, but if you use the wrong standard people will yell at you. Of course, the English at least seem to recognize American spellings, whereas Americans tend to stare into space and ask if "colour" is really a word. (I have seen this.  )That having been said, in defense of American English: 1) There is a regular pattern to the change from spellings like 'colour' to spellings like 'color': it occurs only when the American pronunciation of the final vowel has been reduced to a schwa. (General American English distinguishes ~14 vowel phonemes, RP distinguishes ~21. Some things had to go.) The '-or' usually came first, as well: the 'u' only got added later, in Anglo-French, whereas the 'or' was present in Old French. English is a Germanic language, but it slept around a lot, especially with the French. 2) The 'theatre' -> 'theater' thing was done to provide consistency with other words ending in <er>, like "anger." In not-defense of American English: 1) Our quotation mark usage drives programmers and occasionally non-programmers insane. At work, we just use the UK-English standard to avoid bickering about whether or not putting the period inside the quotes would introduce ambiguity. 2) Noah Webster was insane. No, seriously, look it up. "Furnichur"? Whatchoo talkin' bout, Noah? Moreover, his changes more or less completely failed to address the actual source of the problem, which is that the problem didn't really exist. Spelling is arbitrary, but so is language itself. |
| Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 00:23 | |
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Scherererer
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Evil Roy Ferguson Other languages aren't dying, either, although they're going to start sounding progressively funnier if they keep borrowing words from English at this rate.That's funny because a lot of what American English is today is an über compound of different languages Check out this link: click on a language, and then see all the words that English borrowed from it: www.krysstal.com/borrow.html Like, I don't know what language Temne is, but apparently that's where we got the word "cola" from. I think the English vs. American debate is rather silly. Most of the time we recognize both -- frankly, I've discussed with my friends before, and we're not even sure which version of grey (gray?) is english and which is american. I use the spellings interchangeably. Neither makes much sense, really; the spelling and grammatical rules in both are flawed. Kleene already determined a long time ago that spoken languages just aren't "right" as it is, so it is trite to argue over it. (besides, we won the revolutionary war, get over it already!) (light humor )This one's worth a read, too; and be sure to read the comparisons after the heading "Now for a lovely one… " www.pe2000.com/canute_spelling.htm -=-=- YouTube Twitter Computer Science Series: Logic (pt1) (part 2) (part 3) 2's Complement Mathematics: Basic Differential Calculus
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| Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 02:00 | |
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Evil Roy Ferguso
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Indeed -- as I noted in my post, English slept around a lot. My mother always told me, "English is the language resulting from Saxon warriors trying to hit on Anglo bar maids."
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