Edit: I consciously ignored Tower of Babel due it being a misplaced argument.
Languages evolve all the time. If everyone were to hang on to the languages and identities that were present and predominant at the end of the twentieth century, I don't think we'd get anywhere closer to a more global society. As a nation, there's much more of a reason to have a common language.
Now give me an example of a country as diverse and massive as India whose lingual diversity was a hindrance to growth. I will just go ahead and respond. There is none. India is unique and there is no evidence it's current model won't work.
Languages evolve all the time> Incorrect. Languages evolve over centuries due to several geopolitical reasons like: land topography, availability of food, neighboring tribes. Each language and it's multiple dialects are an imprint of the struggle their speakers went through over hundreds or thousands of years. In case of India, the frequency is so high since it has been a melting pot of the world for a very large period of time.
>Global society Contrary to what you believe it's not synonymous with a central society. The ultimate goal of the human race is a moving target. Adopting a common language so that we can do better trade, better science and produce more is fallacious since we don't know that's we are supposed to do. Maybe we need to slow down so that we don't kill ourselves off by becoming too powerful and cocky. I don't know. Neither do you.
You can learn multiple languages. You can even learn multiple dialects. One of the things I'm proud of my grandfather for was that he learned 22 different dialects of Chinese for the purposes of doing business on a fairly wide scale.
Imperialism is sort of not a thing these days.
At age 21, I have already immigrated twice to countries with different languages, and I have always considered language as the major barrier in everything I always did (because past a certain age, no matter how hard I try, I keep the accent).
I dream of a world where language is a concern of the past. It just makes no sense to keep this hindrance around when there are important things to do.
And which language and universal accent should the world switch to?
In my experience, it does, in most social contexts, and also in job interviews, as some interviewers don't feel it would be as easy for me to integrate to the rest of the team, which is true to some extent. These may all be exceptions but it's a big indicator in my opinion.
>And which language and universal accent should the world switch to?
I think any language known to me would do. When the time comes and people feel ready to accept the idea of one language (looking at the replies I got, it's not gonna happen), we'll discuss it.
That's presuming that the very notion of a one world language would even work, considering all we know about linguistic mutations.
What you want is akin to, "Why are we wasting all this time fighting cancer when we could be achieving spaceflight?" Maybe, just maybe, it's people that are important?
I never said I was going to dictate anything onto anyone, it's an opinion, and yours is acknowldged. 7 billion+ to go.
>That's presuming that the very notion of a one world language would even work, considering all we know about linguistic mutations.
The US have had immigrants from all other the world a few centuries ago and I have never seen any problems directly related to education with 2-3 generations descendants, so I think it was a safe assumption. It can be discussed.
>What you want is akin to, "Why are we wasting all this time fighting cancer when we could be achieving spaceflight?"
Not really. IMO, it is actually much more akin to an engineer proposing that we set a standard so we could stop focusing on component integration so much, and actually get to work. I think many engineers prefer standards to having a large variety of systems that achieve the same things, so I see no reason why that wouldn't apply to languages.
This wasn't the problem.
The problem was that your opinion was to have a universal language.
This is textbook imperialism. This is why English has such major influences from French and Latin when it's essentially a Germanic language. Because a couple of empires invaded England and imposed their language.
> The US have had immigrants from all other the world a few centuries ago and I have never seen any problems directly related to education with 2-3 generations descendants, so I think it was a safe assumption. It can be discussed.
The US prints out reams of extra paperwork precisely so that it can be offered in multiple languages. The US fought and continues to fight proxy wars dealing with how these immigrants are integrated into the culture. New York City used to be a battleground between the Italians and the Irish. Read just about any significant span of American history and you'll find a disagreement between two different sets of immigrants. Don't need no West Side Story to explain it.
Of course, at the same time, the US invented the network standard dialect of English while making fun of Californian versus Midwestern versus New England versus Southern accents. Odd... those are also some of the clearest political battlefield lines historically. And it's the US who is internationally laughed at for having the least informed and most cross-culturally inept population in the world.
Furthermore, do you really want the US to be the de jure overlord of the entire world? Because I don't.
And lastly, linguistic mutation. Even if you buy into the Chomskyian notion of a universal grammar inherent in the biological human brain, you still have the fact that language evolves differently for different groups of people and there isn't any way to reliably intermingle them on a regular basis unless you use top-down imposition.
> IMO, it is actually much more akin to an engineer proposing that we set a standard so we could stop focusing on component integration so much, and actually get to work. I think many engineers prefer standards to having a large variety of systems that achieve the same things, so I see no reason why that wouldn't apply to languages.
So, basically, you want to do this: http://xkcd.com/927/
While that's impressive, this only shows how much better it would have been for trade & business if Chinese people at the point spoke a single language. A businessman wouldn't have to learn 22 languages (quite a significant time investment), to have the same level of reach your grandfather did.