A Global Language

[thegoodhen 698]

@@thegoodhen, True, binary does represent Computer processor instructions, but it can also represent something called text. And you know what we use to communicate over the forums? text.

 

Tyvole ne asi-ale rozumíš snad tomudle textu jenom kvůli tomu že to je text?!

^-I can only agree, friend, but do you understand this text just because it's text?

 

(That's the translation, btw )

 

You're talking about means to pass information with.

Logos is a good way. Terrence McKenna has written a lot about it.

But I'm happy with the way it is, so far.

[Skullbuster 1,906]

i would love it if the entire world spoke one language! that would be awesome and there would be a lot less cultrual missunderstandings as well, hell why we are at it, lets make a global currency too! im sure that would solve a ton of problems!

[MrL0LZ 866]

Tyvole ne asi-ale rozumíš snad tomudle textu jenom kvůli tomu že to je text?!

^-I can only agree, friend, but do you understand this text just because it's text?

 

I disagreed on my first post in this thread for the exact same reason, humans will never be able to understand binary very well, certainly not well enough to become the global language, I'll vote binary when we all become super computers.

[Killian Jones 2,653]

To provide a sensible argument.

 

Sign language: Sign language is still spoken language dependent, while some concepts do become specific gestures, some concepts cannot be translated towards a motion. additionally visually impaired people and simply not looking make the language kind of useless.

 

Braille is a written form denotation of roman characters, is only useful in written form (cannot be spoken) and is dependent on the native language of the writer.

 

Binary is a much more difficult problem. While it is great for computer who usually only know the shades of grey known as black and white and think in either on or off. Secondly computers are very good at being stupid very fast. Meaning they can quickly interpret a large string of binary. Binary being horribly obtuse, to count to 8 we need 4 symbols. and it becomes worse and worse. To provide our old alphabet we need at least 6 symbols to denote each character. On top of that we need to provide interpretation. So not only is binary horribly obtuse for humans. Computers are great at that.

 

We still need to remind ourselves that the human brain is a fairly good reasoning device, so we can allow it to use more characters then 2 to symbolize things. Our brains are capable of much, much more. Which is why it is awesome. So using the Latin alphabet is not that difficult.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Tich

[Evilshy 5,089]

Another problem is that binary isn't a spoken language, nor is it based on one. It can only describe numbers, or letters of an existing language. Even if humans could think and read quickly in binary, it would still have to translate into a spoken language that the human in question knows to be understandable.

 

Well, I suppose you could say that 10001010110001010101011111000101001010 means "cake", but like Tich said, an alphabet with 2 characters is hardly a practical option.

Also, only 2 characters leaves a lot more room for error. In English, if I misepll something, everbyody still knows waht I mean. If you accidentally switched a 1 and a 0 in this hypothetical binary language, it now has a completely different meaning.

An example: let's say we have a 6 character word. In English, there are 308,915,776 possible 6 letter words. Because of the rules of the language, the majority of those combinations can't be words, and of the ones that can, not all are real words. For example, "wapdorn" does not break any rules (that I know of), but is also not an English word (that I know of). With binary, there are 64 possible combinations of 6 characters. All would have to be words just to cover the amount of concepts, which means even a single error would be a new word. With English, I can accidentally type "mipssell", and it is fairly obvious that I mean, "misspell". Mipssell is not a word, and is sufficiently close to its intended spelling. In binary, attempting to type 1001100 might result in 1101100, which would be a completely different word. Also, since there are only 2 characters, it is harder to judge what the intended word might have been. With "mipssell", you can easily tell, based on the letters that ARE in the correct place, and what they are, that I meant to say "misspell". In binary, you couldn't really do that.

I did some calculations. I figure that 4 letter words are about the smallest you can get where misspellings are still readable. In order to get the same kind of variation in possible words, a binary word would need to be 19 characters long. To match the possible variation of a 5 letter word, 23 binary characters are needed. A 6 letter word, 29 characters.

Binary is, simply put, not an option.

 

 

Anyway, English is probably your best bet for a global language. It is the language best suited for describing a lot of technical, complicated things, such as science, computers, economics, etc. Not because it's necessarily better than any other language, English just has more words and concepts to describe these things. It's why you can hear, say, Mexican construction workers talking about extension cords and socket wrenches; English is better at describing them than Spanish (apparently; I don't speak Spanish, so I don't know). And computers? When was the last time you saw a computer forum where nobody spoke English?

 

But the biggest reason English would be the best choice for a global language is that most of the world powers already speak English, and everybody else teaches it at some point during school. Getting the whole world to speak English would take a lot less effort than convincing the entire world to pick Esperanto or some other invented language.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Evilshy and His Own Ego

[Shiki 5,853]

If the world were to legitimately go by one universal language, we would need an entirely new one, or else people will get jealous and whatnot.

Also, English would be a horrible language to be taught on a global scale. You see schools in other countries teach English, yet the people still can hardly even hold a conversation. English is a very sloppy language that follows such a small amount of rules, and can be confusing to many people. They're their there. Two to too. Four for fore. These kinds of things are what make it "confusing." Also, read and read. One is pronounced with a long "e", while the other is a short "e" sound, even though they're spelled the same? Also, all the slang terms English has, and how everywhere uses different words in different ways. I'm sure this'll be in every language, and only adds to my argument that a new language should be made, in order to get rid of cultural corruption of the use of language, thus, making the idea of a global language legitimately efficient.

[Marshmallow 1,134]

It would not work.

And I don't think it would be a good idea either.

 

See, the language is a big part of a country's culture. Most people would not be willing to give up their mother tongue to learn another more "global" language. The language is a big part of what defines the country. Actually, they already tried to make a global language. It's called Esperanto and it's a mix of various languages... But let's be honest. It was pretty much a failure.

But if we really had to choose a global language among those you've listed, I think I'd go with Japanese, just for the fact that it's much more straightforward than English. The grammar is really simple and the alphabet is actually pretty simple and intuitive (except for the kanjis. We should remove the kanjis if we want it to become a global language)

 

And no, English was not very hard for me to learn (mother tongue is french) but that's because I've been exposed to English a lot as a kid, being Canadian and all that.

While English grammar is pretty simple (MUCH easier than french), there are too many exceptions and inconsistencies in the language for it to be a global language. A global language should be easy to learn. English is an etymological language (meaning that the spelling comes from the roots of the word, meaning that how the word is written is not necessarily how it's pronounced) while Japanese is a phonetic language (meaning that the words are written according to what they sound like). A phonetic language is much easier to write than an etymological language.

 

English pronunciation is sometimes very illogical. For instance, how do you explain that the word "read" is pronounced differently depending if it's in the present or past tense, while it is spelled exactly the same in both cases. Or what about the silent "k" in "knee", "knight" etc.

 

As for binary, brail or sign language, I think that it would just be dumb. Humans have vocal cords. So why shouldn't we use them?

Edited August 11, 2012 by Marshmallow

[Lost 1,409]

English, such a great and confusing language (to non-native speakers)

 

Please can you sort the poll out so that the second question has the option "I'm a native English speaker"

[Reversinator 14]

I am wondering as to why we would ever need a global language. Sure, the metaphorical "language barrier" is a problem, but the solution shouldn't be to force everyone to learn a certain language. We can't just "store away" a language like Japanese, which has been used for literally centuries upon centuries, and thus has significant cultural value to the people that speak it. It would also require more than 125 million people to try and learn some other language, which is a serious improbability. And even if all of them could somehow learn the language, most, if not all, of them would have a distinct accent, which could potentially garble them when they speak. This accent would most likely stay with the Japanese people for more than a few generations. If we decided to pick English as the global language, that would mean that about 5 to 6 billion people would still need to learn the language. Creating an entire new language would be even worse, considering that not only would we be preserving none of the original languages, it would require the entire population to learn this language, which is an even bigger improbability. All things considered, a global language is not the way to solve the problem of the language barrier.

[/minirant]

Edited August 11, 2012 by Reversinator

[Lady Rarity Pony 4,892]

These poll options are rather narrow.

 

I would probably vote for English either way, as it seems like a simple language.

[HungryTroll 137]

For native English-speakers:

In second poll it's 1 for "Yes" and 16 for "No" now.

 

I can't say that English was hard for me (I can't say that I'm good in it, but I never have full practice).

It's have a lot of rules, but they pretty simple.

However fact that words cant be writen as they sound driving me mad!

And it's too dry, may be even driest one I ever heard.

 

I don't think It's good idea to use one of modern languages as world one - there no simple enough to learn it easily, Esperanto may be, but it's too strange .

And native language cause really big infuence on kids way of thinking,since I love difference between nations, I'm against standartising the native language.

Edited September 16, 2012 by HungryTroll

[Crispy 5,563]

If we had to pick one universal language, I'd say English.

 

I can't speak for how easy it is to learn, since I've been speaking it my entire life.

 

From what I understand, English is very difficult to non-native speakers, as our rules are kinda screwed up and hard to learn.

[silvadel 1,393]

We lost our grand opportunity to bring forth a global language in the 1970s-early 1980s. There was a project at the time to make a new language where every word had a singular meaning, spelling was completely phonetic, etc in the hopes that it would be easy to make a computer learn as well as being a "better" language than any of the existing ones. Once the internet boom occurred it was too late. There will never be a global language.

[Gekoncze 327]

I think there should be one global language, but it would be a good idea to let every country have its own 2nd language, so we don't have to discard their languages. I would propably choose english for the global language, because it is easy to learn.

As for the binary language... I think binary isn't language itself. It is something that just carry informations just like sound. I could somehow imagine talking in a programming language, but it would sound weird.

[Iudex 1,945]

I would have to say English since it is already spoken almost everywhere. Binary code as a language? How about no. You'll be seeing me speak binary by the time you see me 1337 $/)34<.

I had to learn English when I moved here a decade ago. I caught on pretty fast.

[Cupcake Ice Cream 436]

I definitely do not want a global anything. I like to admire other people's cultures, not meld them with my own and assimilate everyone else. That is just my thoughts though

[Smokin'HotRarity 182]

English pretty much is the default language on the world, people in Europe seem to speak it as well as we can and most other countries use it as a secondary language, in most internet forums English is a requirement and in business and political forums most of the time people speak in English.

[Bunches 81]

my gut reaction would be english because in so many countries in the world they are required to learn english anyway, alongside their native tongue, and in many, learn a third of their choice, unlike in the untied states where we are "suggested" the learn a second language of our choice. i say suggested because most people take about two years of spanish, german, russian, french, whatever, never speak it outside of class, and never take more than the two or three required years, thus never learning the language.

 

but when i think about it, i would suggest the world learn sign language. most of "communication" comes from body language, and then the sounds we make. we would also be able to include deaf people in our conversations which would be awesome.

 

as for culture, i don't think there is any language that can encompass every aspect of every culture in it as a world language. that is partially why we have so many different languages now, we have so many different cultures!

 

...so i did not vote in the poll. is there any option to make the poll in a way where we can vote for more than one? like check boxes? and i suggest an "N/A" option for the second question for those of us who learned english as a first language, the question does not apply.

 

...and now that I am thinking about it... may i suggest Latin as a language. and Arabic... Although there are so many dialects of arabic it's almost ridiculous to just say "arabic" as a language, b/c it really isn't a language...

Edited September 16, 2012 by Bunches

[RBDash 176]

I would say English since it could already be defined as this, but with the spellings changed so that everything is phonetic (I already have an idea for this) (seriously, ay is pronounced as ey and ey as ay in English), ALL words end with an s to become plural, and ALL verbs end with the same suffix for the past tense. Then it would be worthy of an international language.

 

At the very least the Q and X should be removed as letters. Most useless letters in any language.

[MLP Nick 8]

Well im not good at other languages but the only one i know is English and i would have to say its pretty popular more popular then some of the unknown ones anyway

[techno915 407]

I'm kinda liking the idea of binary. It would force people to have think about what they are saying thereby making them have to use their brain, hopefully causing a smarter planet (I know there may be flaws, but hey, it's an idea). Also, I think we should use the phonetic alphabet more (for clarification and stuff over phone or something).

[Smokin'HotRarity 182]

I'm kinda liking the idea of binary. It would force people to have think about what they are saying thereby making them have to use their brain, hopefully causing a smarter planet (I know there may be flaws, but hey, it's an idea). Also, I think we should use the phonetic alphabet more (for clarification and stuff over phone or something).

 

Would it make people smarter? It would probably make them less artistic. It would suck all the fun out of words and deplete all the fun synthesia that comes with language. In other words, it'd be heck-a-boring.

[techno915 407]

 

Would it make people smarter? It would probably make them less artistic. It would suck all the fun out of words and deplete all the fun synthesia that comes with language. In other words, it'd be heck-a-boring.

 

I never said it would be the only language. I'd be fine with speaking English as well. Plus, the main reason I said binary is because I'm a technology person, so I would find it fun to speak in binary.

[FizzyImp 1,838]

I'm a native English speaker, so naturally I would want to throw my vote at that.

I really think English - despite its strange rules - is likely very easy to learn.

I had a few friends from various other countries throughout my school life, and they learned English fairly fast, but I guess that's because they got thrown into the deep end by needing to learn the language in order to properly live and communicate in England.

 

I spoke French as a second language for about 2 years because my granddad is a native Frenchman, and I honestly think English flows so much better in a conversation.

[RazzyJam 1,519]

England took over the world once, Everything is printed in english. English is spoke in in more countries than any other language. English is now your global language. This has been your history lesson for the day!