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Is a universal language undesirable? | ||
Tags: Lingua franca | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 73 of 75 30 August 2013 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
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"I desire to learn X language because it can provide me with cool things."
I have done this more than once, and I will almost certainly do so again. These experiences have provided me with cool things: new music, new movies, new literature, new friends, travel, etc. "I desire that everyone else in the world learn X language because it can provide me with cool things." I am a native speaker of English. I don't reasonably expect that everyone else in the world will learn English, but there are a few hundred million people who have done so. This situation already provides me with some cool things. It makes it easier for me to travel, meet people from around the world, and lots of literature is translated into English. If all people in the world were fluent in a language that was not native to anyone, sooner or later people with differing native languages would meet and marry and have children...who would be native speakers of that universal language. Would existing native languages be threatened by the rise of this universal language? If there is a truly universal language, why would you bother with an old native language spoken by "only" a few hundred million people? The closest thing we've seen to this is Esperanto. It's been around since 1887, and even the most optimistic estimate suggests that only two million people speak it. That's still a far cry from being universal. At this rate, I don't expect to be alive long enough to see this universal language. It might be possible to do all sorts of cool things with the universal language, but it would also be possible to do all sorts of uncool things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 74 of 75 15 September 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
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Don't think there is 1 universal language everybody can agree to. The most widely used by # is Chinese Mandarin
& Spanish besides English, Russian & Portuguese. For hundreds of years, there are many words and phrases that are unique to local surroundings that have no equivalent in another language. 1 phrase in Chinese is: 狀元 zhuàngyuán. Now it is translated as "scholar" or someone with a high academic aptitude (often the ones with the highest exam scores in school). Once this term is used to describe the ones with the best scores under the imperial exam system. Now that China is a republic, the 高考 gāokǎo high school exam became the national standard to determine the best students. Besides China, there is no other country that has the same exam. The closest equivalent in the US would be the SAT test. Another word is typhoon or 台風 táifēng. In English we distinguish between typhoon as a type of storm in E. Asia and hurricane as a storm in the US along the Gulf of Mexico. In Chinese there isn't a separate word for hurricane. A more universal language is English that is spoken in places as Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, Singapore etc. but each with its own slightly different accents and regional vocabularies. Taking local variations into account we would fill up at the "petro station" instead of the "gas station", cross the road at the "zebra crossing" or "zebra" instead of "pedestrian crossing", "photograph someone" instead of "take someone's picture", open the car's "bonnet" to check the engine instead of the "hood", carry cargo in a "lorry" instead of "truck", etc. Even the Braille alphabet is specific to languages of different countries. A person using Braille in China wouldn't understand another in England. The only language that seemed to be universal seemed to be math & science symbols every country agree the same symbols such as +-*/ would mean the same. Computer languages strictly for computing math problems & equations the same. The other day came across someone who invented a symbolic language for the disabled that uses symbols such as a a circle with a cross in the middle for a wheel, add a few more lines you have the symbol for "wheelchair". And an arrow pointing down for the "sad", etc. The symbols are like ideograms in Chinese where the pronunciation is independent from the symbols which are not letters of an alphabet. Edited by shk00design on 15 September 2013 at 10:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 75 of 75 19 September 2013 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
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Is a universal language across humanity desirable? Yes, definitely. In today's modern world, should we try
to achieve it? No. At this point in human civilization, multiculturalism is the key. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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