English should be designated as the world's language

[quinnox]

I can hear it already, "ugly American". "American-centric" But let's have English officially recognized as the world language. It is time. Language barriers need not exist, in this ever connected and internet plugged-in world. What do you say? English for all, and no language barriers.

[blogslut]

1. Why English?

Hmmm?

[FSogol]

182. Because that's the only language the OP has been able to learn.

[ellisonz]

193. Because this is DU:

At Tue Jan 15, 2013, 01:31 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

Because that's the only language the OP has been able to learn.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2189329

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

This is a personal attack against the writer of the OP. The specific TOS violation is in the section, "No bigoted hate speech", "disability, or other comparable personal characteristic".

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Tue Jan 15, 2013, 01:39 AM, and the Jury voted 2-4 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Seriously? It's a joke! It's low-hanging sarcasm. It's not even a mean one!
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: Hide it so MIRT can decide.
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said:
This is beyond even what I call "DU sensitive".

Leave it. Phrased as a question, no malice involved.

I was Juror #1 - You, Sir, Are A Bigot Against People Who Can Only Learn Their Native Tongue

[FSogol]

194. LOL: "Hide it so MIRT can decide."

Thanks for posting the results.

[FSogol]

195. That alert reminds me of my favorite language joke:

What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
.
.
.
.
Bilingual.
.
.
.
.
What to you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
.
.
.
.
Trilingual.
.
.
.
.
What do you call someone who only speaks 1 language?
.
.
.
.
An American.

[Orrex]

2. .

[Angry Dragon]

5. I will second that

[RKP5637]

9. ...

[quinnox]

16. lol

[awoke_in_2003]

64. Don't bogart the popcorn...

On edit: I brought the beer

[samsingh]

3. why not English

[theKed]

169. Why not Zoidberg?

[samsingh]

184. it's not spoken by very many people

[keroro gunsou]

196. to quote your avatar...

YES!

and i said that with maurice la marche's voice

[arcane1]

4. Spanish would make more sense

[vaberella]

35. No it wouldn't. The OP said "WORLD" not US of America.

If it's the World, there are more people in the world speaking English or Chinese. Not Spanish. USA makes more sense if you're speaking about Spanish.

[blogslut]

44. Actually, Spanish is #2

At least if, these numbers from Nationalencyklopedin and Ethnologue are correct:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

[Confusious]

49. But how many learn it as a second language?

89% learn it as a second language in Europe.

[blogslut]

50. Hell if I know

When it comes to my personal comprehension, Math is not one of my second languages.

[FarCenter]

103. In terms of total number of speakers, Spanish is behind Chinese and English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

English is normally used for international business, confences, etc. It is already the international language.

[vaberella]

127. Which is exactly what I was referring too.n/t

[blogslut]

145. Cool

However, when it comes to the OP, I think it's about something other than reality.

[Confusious]

48. No it wouldn't

Most international communities use English, it's the language of the UN, science, air traffic control and maritime, and somewhere around 2 billion speak it.

[bhikkhu]

124. Korean would make even better sense

as it has a written form that is about the easiest to learn of any language. The alphabet actually makes sense, and the number of exceptions to the rules of spelling and pronunciation are very small. As opposed to English, where the exceptions are ridiculously common, and spelling and pronunciation are practically arbitrary.

But, with that said, the odds of a universal language that works is pretty slim. (Anyone still pushing Esperanto?)

[vaberella]

129. You are right...but they are adapting to Western culture more and more.

So I don't see them as a powerhouse figure...more of a follower to say the least. Although technology wise they are impressive at improving what we put out there. Long live Samsung and LG!

[Jackpine Radical]

131. English orthography could be readily simplified.

See the Shavian Alphabet for an interesting example.

The Shavian alphabet (also known as Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as phonetic as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to sounds); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet#.C5.9Cava_alfabeto

[FarCenter]

141. The International Phonetic Alphabet could be used

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

English written material would be somewhat more compact in IPA.

Typing IPA would require an unweildy keyboard, but keying should become obsolete shortly and be replaced by speech to text.

IPA would also simplify text to speech synthesis.

Students would no longer need to learn writing and reading, which would simplify primary education enormously.

[Jenoch]

163. We can't even update the QWERTY keyboard

even years after it was the solution to a problem that has not existed for a long time. We failed at adapting to the metric system. How will we change the alphabet?

[RKP5637]

176. Thanks for posting this ... Most Americans couldn't even understand the simple metric system. I

can't begin to comprehend Americans adapting to another alphabet. ... most can't even do simple math. And many can't even speak grammatically correct English.

[Jackpine Radical]

181. Well, the REST of the English-speaking world has at least gone metric.

As to QWERTY, yeah. Dvorak seems to be a failed experiment. Sadly.

[Kalidurga]

135. Funny you should ask...

It was the first language I thought of when talking about what language should be the world language.

[WinkyDink]

175. Not really. Ask Brazil.

[BlueCaliDem]

6. OR we can continue strengthening our synapses by learning other languages

which help us cerebrally. I don't know if this has ever been studied, but from my own experience, I've found that people who speak, read, and write more than one language have a broader mind and are considered pretty intelligent by their peers.

[surrealAmerican]

29. I was just reading a few days ago ...

... that people who speak more than one language are less prone to alzheimer's disease.


It's good for your brain to learn a few languages.

[RKP5637]

7. Latin! n/t

[dipsydoodle]

8. How about you learn how to spell it correctly first.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

178. You mean, spell with the extra (and unnecessary) "u"s?

as in "Howdy, neighbour"!


Not to mention the funny use of words, like "boot" and "bonnet" to describe automobile bits.

And completely meaningless words, like "codswallop" (a personal favourite - grrr, bad spelling again)

Two countries separated by a common language - Shaw.

[dipsydoodle]

179. ha ha

[BlueCaliDem]

10. How about Chinese? It's the most spoken language in the world. eom

[Orrex]

12. Is it? Mandarin or Cantonese?

And is it the most widely spoken primary language, the most widely spoken language generally, or both?

I honestly don't know.

[BlueCaliDem]

24. Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects rather than separate languages.

Every Chinese I know, know them all: Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min dialects. That's why I only posted Chinese, understanding there IS a standard language with many varieties.

It's a lot like Dutch. There is the "algemeen beschaafd nederlands" (ABN, the main language as spoken by the Queen) and then there are the dialects from all 12 provinces, but they're all intelligible by any resident of other provinces.

[Orrex]

27. Anyway, what about the other question?

Is it the most widely spoken language overall? Or is it the most widely spoke primary language?

A big and important distinction.

[BlueCaliDem]

34. What is the distinction? Elaborate. eom

[Orrex]

42. Okay

I accept that more people worldwide learn Chinese as their native language while children. But is that number of Chinese-as-primary speakers larger than the number of people who can speak English well enough to communicate?

Wikipedia, for instance, reports that English is the most widely used language on Earth, and it is the third most common native language after Mandarin and Spanish.

Wiki also has this to report, which was news to me:

ere are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. (emphasis mine)

[BlueCaliDem]

54. Strange, but from that same page

it states this at the top:

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ, 华语/華語 Huáyǔ, or 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

Since Mandarin-Chinese is the most used, it should be the standard-bearer of the Chinese language then. That said, it's still Chinese. My argument is still valid.

There are more people worldwide who speak Mandarin-Chinese than English, so based on the OP's suggestion of a world-wide language, (English is his/her preference, obviously) shouldn't the world's language be the most spoken language of the world, not English, that comes in third place (after Spanish)?

[Orrex]

62. You're misreading the numbers

English is already the most widely used language on the planet, so by your own assertion it should be made the world's language (if there were to be one).

The issue is not the number of native speakers but the number of people who can understand the language. By that metric, English is the clear winner.

Here's something else to consider, regarding your claim that all Chinese dialects are "mutually intelligible" among their various speakers:

consider how American audiences raved about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while Chinese audiences winced as they watched Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, Cantonese speakers, stumble through their Mandarin lines. To non-Chinese speakers, the dialogue comes across as nuanced and flowing, while to a Chinese speaker, it is like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice come out of a Chinese martial artist. --From Cracked.com

You can quibble about the source of the citation, but it raised an interesting point: are the various Chinese language truly as interchangeable as you assert?

[BlueCaliDem]

72. I don't assert anything other than what I've read by

those who have studied the variant in languages and who are more worldlier than I am. Perhaps the discrepancy here has to do with the difference between audible language and written language?

As I've explained in one of my previous posts, dialects are difficult to listen to and understand for any native of any particular language, but the writing of that language generally stays the same and are mutually intelligible.

As an example to illustrate what I mean, picture how a TeaBagger would hear Oxford or Cockney English. S/He wouldn't know what they meant if they pronounced the simple word, "aluminum" or if they said "zet" as opposed to "zee" for the letter "z". I would safely bet that the majority of American audiences would be as confused listening to a movie with Cockney actors and dialogue as the Chinese audience listening were listening to Chow Yun-Fat's Mandarin dialogue.

[Orrex]

78. You're arguing a point that's been multiply refuted

I get it--a resident of some small town in the Ozarks won't be able to converse easily with an artful dodger from East London. But so what? Geographically isolated dialects do not constitute the entirety of a language--they represent the edges of the bell curve. Compare that with Chinese dialects spoken by 90 million people or more (rather a larger number than a few thousand East Londoners, wouldn't you say?) When you get into numbers of that size, the difference in the various forms of the language become really significant.

In any case, we're not talking about the breadth of the English language; we're talking about the number of people who can already understand the language that is called English.

That number exceeds the number of people who can understand Chinese, even if you include the many dialects (dialects which multiple people and sources, including someone in this thread with first-hand knowledge) have identified as having limited intercompatibility.


I don't know what it would take to convince you, since you don't find online citations, actual numbers, or direct personal experience to be persuasive.

All I can do at this point is repeat my feeling that we shouldn't force the world to name one official language, but it we were to identify one based on the current state of the world, that language would be English.

[BlueCaliDem]

101. Maybe it's been refuted in your mind since it's about winning an argument for you

rather than an honest debate. I'm sorry, but you are wrong based on the numbers by researchers who know more about this than you apparently do.

But that said, the same argument you put forward can be turned against you.

If you believe that there are more English speaking people in the world, counting English as a second language, to justify making it the world-language (which, I know, you aren't advocating but you are arguing), take into account that Chinese (Mandarin) is still #1 even though they, too, speak English which still didn't help the English language as the most spoken language shoot to #1.

Here is the evidence:

The following list is from George Weber’s article “Top Languages: The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec 1997):
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
English (330 million)
Spanish (300 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (200 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Portuguese (160 million)
Russian (160 million)
Japanese (125 million)
German (100 million)
Punjabi (90 million)
Javanese (80 million)
French (75 million)

However, in terms of secondary speakers, Weber submits the following list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

French (190 million)
English (150 million)
Russian (125 million)
Portuguese (28 million)
Arabic (21 million)
Spanish (20 million)
Chinese (20 million)
German (9 million)
Japanese (8 million)

Thus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million)
French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million)

http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

There. I hope that satisfies the criteria for online sources and numbers for you. My argument stands. Yours didn't. End of story.

[Orrex]

133. It's not "all about winning." That's a petulent objection.

Last edited Mon Jan 14, 2013, 10:24 AM - Edit history (1)

So your numbers apparently differ from Wiki's. I'll check on that later because I'm on my phone now and can't readily cut and paste.

Take a breather. You'll be fine.

[BlueCaliDem]

168. Yes, it's petulant. So why was that your objective?

That said, my numbers trump yours because, as I've made clear in my post and what you'll discover when you finally find the time to follow the link, those aren't my numbers. Those are the numbers and the analyses by professional researchers who actually study this stuff.

[Orrex]

170. It is typical of the person losing an argument to complain about the person winning the argument

If it makes you feel better, I'll imagine that the online citations, actual numbers, and direct personal experience don't entirely refute your claims. Peachy?

As for your statistics about language use, I can as readily cite equally definitive numbers that demonstrate, if nothing else, that the matter is still under debate. I note that estimates from 2011 and 2012 put the number of English speakers at 1.5 to 1.8 billion speakers.

This Wikipedia entry shows conflicting totals, one of which places Standard Chinese as number one, and another which places English at the top.


I'd say that you're more deeply invested in this than I am, demonstrated by how upset you've gotten over trivia. Let's just pretend that you're right, as well as polite and reasonable, and be done with it.


There. You won an argument. Well done.

[Confusious]

99. Someone who speaks canton can't understand mandarin

They can write notes to each other though. They use the same characters.

I've seen multiple people say it, and you can look it up on the web.

[randome]

105. My inclination for Chinese languages is to trust in the username of 'Confuscious'.

[BlueCaliDem]

112. Oh, I believe you completely. 100%.

But both Mandarin and Cantonese are considered part of the Chinese language, although variants/dialects of it.

As an example: Amsterdam and Arnhem; two provinces in the Netherlands. They speak Dutch, the official language of the Netherlands. But put an Amsterdammer and Arnhemmer in one room to have a conversation, they'd be hard-pressed to understand each other - even when writing notes. I've seen this happen. I speak, read, and write fluent Dutch, but when I have to speak with an Amsterdammer, I have to strain my hearing. But that doesn't mean Amsterdam has its own language. They're just dialects of the Dutch language (and very difficult to understand, believe you me).

[pangaia]

185. YOU can look it up on the web.

I have spent a lot of time in Guangzhou and a large majority of educated people there speak Cantonese AND Mandarin... Of course not all...

[pangaia]

57. My experience in China, and having a Chinese wife,

is a little different. I agree that Putonghua, while, probably theoretically a dialect, is considered the 'official language' of China. And as such more people in the world speak Mandarin as a primary language than any other language.

Even this is misleading as people in an area of, lets say Guangzhou, may learn Cantonese at home, but learn Mandarin in school. However, in my considerable travels across China I have not found that all Chinese know all or even several languages, especially outside the large cities, or even among the less educated in those cities.

People I know in Beijing, Qingdao, Wuxi, Wuhan do not speak Cantonese. They may know some, or even many words but not enough to communicate. Mandarin usually works...

Most/many of those ubiquitous American so-called "Chinese ' restaurants are owned by people from Fujian. My wife speaks excellent Mandarin, and knows enough of several dialects to get by, but she can't understand anything they are talking about. :&gt
They CAN communicate in "Putonghua," however.

I would still vote for Mandarin as a world language but only IF there had to be ONE language.

[pnwmom]

147. Spanish is easier to learn than English or Mandarin.

[lunasun]

155. agree! I was trying to say rice and I was saying poop all because of the intonation

Mandarin was not so easy for me!
Spanish French Italian all the 'latin' languages at least make sense if you are a native English
at least me

English not so much to other tongues.....just sayin ....not dissin English ..so dont go all crazy on the comment

[pnwmom]

157. Spanish is much easier than French or English to spell, because it doesn't have all those

silent letters.

And it's spoken around the world more than Italian.

And it's one of the easier languages for people with dyslexia.

[blogslut]

31. Here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

[BlueCaliDem]

40. Thank you for this. Mandarin

is a dialect of the standard Chinese language just as Oxford English is the standard of the English language despite its many dialects (including American English).

[War Horse]

19. Well, more and more people *do* study Chinese

And the Chinese are also getting more proficient in English.

[BlueCaliDem]

30. True. On the other hand, imo, Spanish is the easiest language to learn

so I'd opt for Spanish rather than English. English, or its American variant, is more complicated than most people think.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

59. Spanish is easiest IF you speak English or another Western European language

If you're Asian, Spanish is no easier than English.

The "ease" of a language is directly proportional to how close it is to your native language.

English speakers find Japanese to be devilishly difficult. Koreans find it to be a snap. I once had a Korean student who examined into second-semester Japanese by studying the first semester material during the two weeks of Christmas vacation.

[BlueCaliDem]

63. Wow. That was one intelligent student!

Jeezus. He learned first-semester Japanese in two weeks! Amazing.

Now I have a renewed respect for all those Koreans and Chinese who speak pretty fluent Spanish and who told me that they learned "on the job". They all owned small businesses in predominantly Mexican neighborhoods in SoCal and had to learn Mexican-Spanish and English for their non-Korean customers.

[pangaia]

71. Interesting..

I flunked French in college--twice, many years ago! But aced German. And became fairly fluent in German.

I did not have any excessive difficulty learning Japanese well enough to live for more than a year in Japan speaking only Japanese.
But, I had a hell of a time learning Mandarin. For me it was a matter of pronunciation. German and Japanese were easier for me. French and Mandarin, much more difficult.

[War Horse]

65. English is actually my second language

I can probably still get by in German, but would have to "re-learn" French (use it or lose it). Don't know if my brain has room for more languages. The thought of learning a non-Germanic or non-Latin language makes me shudder at this point, but I'm glad our kids are working on it.

But it does make a lot of sense to learn Spanish, it really does. Kinda sorta working on it myself

[BlueCaliDem]

83. American-English is my first language (born in the U.S.)

and Dutch is my second (lived in Holland for 16 years, speak, read, and write it fluently).

However, I flunked German in Junior High in Holland ( ), but aced French ( - 9.5 our of 10 grade average). Spanish was easiest for me although I've lost a great deal of it over the years, but I had learned it quicker than French. It's a beautiful language although in Spanish, too, there are many variants. Peruvians, for example, speak a different variation of Spanish than Mexicans.

My friend is Peruvian, and when we were on our way to Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, she lost her way in the maze of downtown L.A. streets so she needed to stop and ask for directions (this was before GPS and iPhones w/GPS). She stopped a Mexican woman on the sidewalk and asked directions. The woman looked at her as if she were speaking a totally different language! Her daughter, who had a Mexican boyfriend and knew how to speak Mexican-Spanish, jumped in to help, and only then did the Mexican woman understand what we wanted. I was very surprised when I saw that happen in real time. It was very interesting.

[War Horse]

94. Interesting, indeed

It's often the "surprising/unexpected/unknown" part that catch folks off guard, I've found. Same thing with EUR Spanish and Latin American Spanish speakers, in my very limited experience. (Broad brushing a bit here, I know).

I'm Norwegian native speaker, but I've actually had to help US EN speakers navigate certain UK dialects

All of my Dutch friends have acquired a basic proficiency of Norwegian rather easily, though, interestingly enough. Some of them struggle a bit w/ the definite article, though .

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. And not suited to being a lingua franca.

Chinese is very hard to learn for non-native speakers; the writing system is such a nightmare that even native speakers with years of education often can't properly identify the particular character for a given word.

See here for instance: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

[BlueCaliDem]

61. Many people believe the same thing about the English lang - as

Teabaggers and other assorted RWNJ prove again and again, and they are supposed native-speakers of the English (American version) language, yet they still can't get it right. English is not an easy language to learn. Sure, conversational English is simple enough, but the English vocabulary is so extensive that it's very easy to make errors and almost impossible to write properly.

I really believe Spanish should be the world language, though (although I'm not proficient in it, either), because as I learned the language in Junior High (many moons ago), it was easier than French, English, German, and especially Dutch (another difficult language to learn), languages that were a mandatory part of my High School curriculum in Holland.

[Jenoch]

164. I have a high school buddy

who studied international business and moved to Taipei over twenty years ago. He has a Chinese wfe. When people with whom he has spoken over the telephone meet him for the first time in person, they are shocked to see he is an American. I guess he speaks their native tongue fairly well.

[Confusious]

51. The problem with Chinese

From what I hear, is that you can never become a native speaker, even after years and years, because of the inflections in the language.

Also added difficulty due to the character set.

[backscatter712]

113. Holy Testicle Tuesday, I can work on my Chinese swearing!

We'd all be talking like the crew in Firefly!

[Egalitarian Thug]

151. Too limited, too imprecise, too many regional variations, too difficult to learn.

None of the Asian languages are suited to being an official international language.

[BlueCaliDem]

161. That's true. I agree. eom

[SheilaT]

180. I'm under the distinct impression that its various dialects

are mutually incomprehensible. The written version apparently is universal to Chinese, but not the spoken version.

And what in the world would a Chinese typewriter look like?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. ugh

and we should all wear the same clothes and drive the same cars and eat the same food because who wants to be different or unique or special or interesting...

[LiberalEsto]

13. Only if English gets rid of its crazy grammar, etc.

Just the fact that letters are pronounced many different ways - like the a in cat, car, the silent letters like the gh in laugh.

I learned English when I was 5. I could already read and write in Estonia. Estonian speakers have an easy time learning to read and write in the language because every letter has just one sound that never changes. It's completely phonetic.

When I started learning to read English, it was confusing as heck trying to memorize all the crazy rules and pronunciations.

[quinnox]

14. that is part of its charm

English for all!

[Spider Jerusalem]

25. The problem with that is dialects and regional variations as well as sound shifts...

and pronunciation changes. Whenever I hear people advocate "phonetic spelling" I just laugh and wonder "whose phoentics"? Phonetic spelling of General American is not the same as British Received Pronunciation is not the same as Inland US Southern is not the same as Cockney or Scots or Mancunian.

[lunasun]

156. Oh Scots or Cockney-perfect example of this all for one and why it doesnt go too far for speech

[DetlefK]

45. Second that.

Btw, German allows you to create wonderful chained word-constructs. A famous one is
"Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän"
literal translation: "Danube-steamship-traffic-society-captain"
translation by sense: "captain working for the entity responsible for steamship-traffic on the river Danube"

You can stack and stack and stack... You could, for the level of detail, go down to the eye-color of the mother-in-law of the guy who designed the sole of the captain's shoe! All in one long word that's easy to write and comprehend, but nobody would have the nerve to actually spend the time speaking it.

You get a monster of a word, but you can cram the essence of a lengthy and complex explanation in it, making this method very precise and very popular with german bureaucrats.

[LiberalEsto]

76. German has problems with "der, die and das" articles

I took three years of German in high school, and had a lot of difficulty guessing at what things took the masculine article der, the feminine article die, or the neutral article das. Same problem in French. These antiquated gendered articles should be reformed.

While not promoting Estonian because it is difficult to learn, I believe it is a good example of a language that doesn't bother using articles to denote gender in a word. Estonian simply does not use articles.

Also, the gender-based pronouns and possessives her and she, his and her don't create hassles for Estonian speakers. We use the neutral pronoun ta and possessive tema instead.

[Igel]

84. So does English.

We just put spaces between words.

Arnie Duncan enjoys all the Department of Education cabinet appointee position perks that are permitted by law.

Yesterday a Harris County high school science student tried to fit a miniSDHC-format cell phone card adapter into his standard HP tablet SD card slot.

Notice the nouns. "Department of Education cabinet appointee position perk". "Harris County high school science student." "Mini-SDHC-format cell phone card adapter." "HP tablet SD card slot."

Just try to use the "adjective" form of those few words in my examples have. "A Harris County high school scientific student." "Department of Education cabinet appointee positional perk." Yeah. Doesn't work. They're compounds.

All the people that go around complaining that "X" has to be an adjective in form and not just function utterly miss that English is a Germanic language. Like German, we have adjective suffixes. Like German, we freely compound.

For formal linguistic purposes we talk of "coercion" and say that these nouns are coerced (syntactically) into functioning as adjectives. They are still special adjectives, though, because their stress properties are a bit different from normal adjective-noun phrases.

[Jackpine Radical]

132. I call for a general

Waffenstillstandbehandlungsondersitzung.

[LiberalEsto]

140. Um...

Was bedeutet das?

[Jackpine Radical]

159. Special meeting of an Armistice Committee.

[LiberalEsto]

173. Sehr dank

(and that's about the extent of my German)

[loyalsister]

122. There, their, they're, them??

Two, to, too

Hands, fingers, toes, feet (wtf?) Go, gone, went?

And on and on.... English lacks a logical structure. After learning language we learn a nonsensical measuring system. Ten fingers and ten toes and somehow we have inches, yards, and acres. Despite knowing how to count to 100, we set freezing at 32. It's a mystery that we would we not make measurements more user friendly.

[bhikkhu]

123. Or better - its completely arbitrary spelling

I read one thing awhile back about the old saw "the Chinese are disadvantaged because they have to learn all those characters to be able to read". On the other hand, in English you have to memorize far more word spellings, as the rules are so arbitrary and full of exceptions that it works about the same - we have to remember how every word looks, the same as if they were each represented by their own character. Perhaps we have better "clues" to help us, but in Chinese there are elements to the writing of the characters that also help one along.

[Jackpine Radical]

160. The advantage of the Chinese system

is that people of mutually unintelligible dialects can read each other's writing.

And English spelling isn't so much arbitrary as sort of archaic. The pronunciation has changed and the spelling hasn't. Take, for example, the German word Knecht and the English word Knight. They were once pronounced a lot alike, but the English pronunciation shifted and the German remained pretty much the same. There are a lot of similar examples--light, Licht, enough, genug, etc.

[Jenoch]

165. Here is a list of words in English that might be problematic

for someone attempting to learn the language:

bough
dough
tough
through

[FSogol]

183. The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough

From Doctor Sesus of course.

[War Horse]

15. It already is a lingua franca in many respects

I don't expect that to change any time soon. But "American-centric" - isn't more more like &quot Simplified) UK English centric"?

[spanone]

17. who are we to say what the world's language should be?

silly.

[pinboy3niner]

18. I'd go for something retro...

...like Aramaic.

[arcane1]

21. How about Indo-European?

Old-school!!

[pinboy3niner]

39. Some status quo proponents would say that that Tower of Babel is too damn short!

[arcane1]

46. LMAO!

:Spittingoutcoffeesmiley:

[Recursion]

20. All Internet protocols are written in English

So in some ways it already is.

[polly7]

22. What a horrible idea. nt.

[MrScorpio]

26. Esperanto

Universala Vortaros for everyone!

[hunter]

108. I prefer Interlingua -- similar to Spanish with fewer quirks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

People who speak Romance languages, Spanish speakers especially, can read it almost right away

From an essay by Alexander Gode:

Interlingua se ha distachate ab le movimento pro le disveloppamento e le introduction de un lingua universal pro tote le humanitate. Si o non on crede que un lingua pro tote le humanitate es possibile, si o non on crede que interlingua va devenir un tal lingua es totalmente indifferente ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme. Le sol facto que importa (ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme) es que interlingua, gratias a su ambition de reflecter le homogeneitate cultural e ergo linguistic del occidente, es capace de render servicios tangibile a iste precise momento del historia del mundo. Il es per su contributiones actual e non per le promissas de su adherentes que interlingua vole esser judicate.

Interlingua has detached itself from the movement for the development and introduction of a universal language for all humanity. Whether or not one believes that a language for all humanity is possible, whether or not one believes that Interlingua will become such a language is totally irrelevant from the point of view of Interlingua itself. The only fact that matters (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its ambition of reflecting the cultural and thus linguistic homogeneity of the West, is capable of rendering tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is by its present contributions and not by the promises of its adherents that Interlingua wishes to be judged.

[Speck Tater]

28. Once this thread sets the world standard,

you guys be sure to let me know so I'll know which additional language, if any, I need to learn.

[vaberella]

32. Chinese is coming up...and even our people are learning it to compete in the world market.

So...no. Whomever controls the world market controls the dominance of a language. America nor Britain holds many of those cards.

[Confusious]

89. If Chinese competes with English I would be surprised

Taking a realistic view.

To hard to learn, have to get the inflections right, most people use alphabets, not characters. you can never be a native speaker, even after years and years of practice.

English is the standard for the UN, science, air traffic control, maritime commerce. 2 billion speakers, native and non native around the world.

[vaberella]

126. Actually...

I think you will be surprised then. Most students learning business in England are actually required to learn basic Mandarin. Not to mention the 1 billion or so population also counts as making it a world figure head. And it's making international moves; particularly in Africa and the Middle East.

You're right in certain respects to the difficulty of the language...that is also why Mandarin has evolved a long way from traditional characters and is adopting pinyin more and more as the main form of writing. I never said English is not a powerhouse...but they are not controlling the market any longer and when other nations like China start making international waves as they are adopting English will have to start backpedaling. To me what you're saying is basically people who fear the rise of China's influence.

[Confusious]

134. 2 billion speak English

1.6 billion non native, and 400 million native.

And yes, I do fear china. Not because of who they are, but because of thier government.

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but Japanese and Chinese fighters had a run in the other day.

[pinboy3niner]

33. Sounds like a path to illiterateship...

[redgreenandblue]

37. Yeah. Lets make English the world's *offical* language.

[War Horse]

69. Somehow I don't think those morans

would do very well even in an "English as the lingua franca" world .

[HarveyDarkey]

36. Why not Engrish, it would be much more fun

http://www.engrish.com/

[MineralMan]

38. Why? It's difficult to learn, a hodgepodge of borrowings from other languages,

and is far from universal, worldwide. You speak and write English as your native language. You're part of less than 6% of the world's population for that. There are many major languages on this big planet, and learning some of those helps expand your own horizons and demonstrates a certain lack of language chauvinism.

Our variety of languages, globally, offers fresh points of view and philosophical differences around the world.

Diversity is a good thing.

[War Horse]

55. Someone once told me that English is a Germanic language

with a very bad case of latinitis

[MineralMan]

77. That's pretty close.

English is a language of borrowing. It has borrowed from just about every other European language over the centuries. Its spelling is haphazard, it's grammar is a lousy mess of exceptions, and it's one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to become completely fluent in. Still, it works for those born to it just fine, and offers a very wide vocabulary from which to choose.

But I can't think of a single reason for it to become a universal languages. In fact, I can't see the utility or even the possibility of a universal language at all.

[War Horse]

109. Oh, how I know about the exceptions... :)

Years spent on "grammar trees".

I don't see the case for a universal language either. Someone would always had to start from scratch, somewhere, regardless.

[Confusious]

90. 2 billion people speak English

Native and non native.

English is the Language for the UN, air traffic control, maritime commerce.

Diversity is a good thing, but how do you share your diversity without a common language?

[The Second Stone]

41. I don't see the need for an official world language

voluntary learning of language is enough for me.

[former9thward]

43. The world's marketplace already has designated English.

I have been in 41 countries so far and English is widely spoken in all of them. In most of them it is taught as a mandatory subject in schools. It is the language of business and the world knows it.

[A HERETIC I AM]

189. I find it interesting that the few posts that express this point of view have NO responses.

And you're right. It is also the international language of Air Traffic Control and if I am not mistaken, Maritime communications.

[former9thward]

190. I am no cheerleader for globalism.

But for better or worse we are here. In the short term at least it will probably be for the worse as far as the U.S. is concerned. But the point is that no country -- especially its young population -- wants to be left behind.

[sibelian]

47. What for?

[darkangel218]

52. Its easier to "conquer" when you take their culture/language away.

That's probably what the OP thinks.

[Confusious]

91. How about we not "infer" what someone thinks?

A common language makes it easier to chat and work together.

English has become that language, for the most part.

[darkangel218]

100. English is already being taught all over the world.

There are no restrictions to learning English. Anyone can, if they have the will to.

The OP sugests English to be made the official language." Easier to chat and work together " sure. But a HUGE part of any national identity and culture is their Language. I'm not okay with that at all.

Perheps the OP didn't think of the consequences of such changes. Would you like if someone proposed Spanish to be the official internationalb language?

I'm not at all for globalization.

[Confusious]

106. "official" doesn't really mean much

Like an honorary doctorate.

Most people wouldn't learn it, nor should they, if they don't have dealings outside their country.

Right now, it's an official language at the UN, science, air traffic control, maritime commerce, and 2 billion speak it. It would be and honors doctorate to say that.

It used to be the language of peasants.

[bowens43]

53. most of the world doesn't speak english

sorry but this is a ridiculous idea

[Confusious]

92. Non native speakers of English

Outnumber native speakers by 1.6 billion to 400 million.

[davidn3600]

56. English is already pretty official

It's pretty much the standard language of commerce and diplomacy.

If you want to do any business internationally, you pretty much have to at least understand English. It's been that way for centuries.

Even in the Olympics the two official languages are English and French. If you can't read/write in either, you better have translators.

[CJCRANE]

58. IMO the thing that's holding Europe back...

compared to the US, is the fact that they don't have an agreed common language.

[pangaia]

85. I don't think that is a problem.

Most educated Europeans speak at least 2 languages..often 3,4 and a little of another or 2.

[CJCRANE]

102. I'm thinking of the EU government...

they don't have an elected president.

I think part of that must be the diversity of languages, they don't have politicians who have appeal across the whole continent.

[csziggy]

60. Let's all start speaking Esperanto!

I is intended to be a cross cultural language and already has a number of speakers, published works, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Geography_and_demography

That way we avoid the charges of cultural bias for a particular traditional language.

[Igel]

96. Esperanto draws on a few European languages.

All Indo-European.

It's easier for IE speakers to learn than, say, Finns or Hungarians.

It's not as narrowly built as Interlingua. Once got a conference announcement written in a language other than English and there was a word or two I had to guess about. Didn't interfere with the meaning, though. I thought, "Interesting conference, got nothing to present." Then I stopped short. "And just what language is this call for papers written in?"

Wasn't Spanish or Portuguese, Italian or French or Romanian and their dialects. But it was certainly Romance. Ruled out Catalan and Sardinian and Romansch. Rummaged for a few minutes and determined it was Interlingua.

But if you build a language that is equally easy for English, Arabic, Swahili, Mandarin, Tagalog, Tamil and Thai speakers you'll find that it's no easier than Arabic would be for Tagalog speakers, English for Mandarin speakers, or Tamil for English speakers. With one exception.

Orthography. English orthography isn't bad for reading, if you know the language. (Really, it isn't.) It's bad for putting spoken words into written. It's certainly better than Chinese on that score, however (which is why they have pinyin, after all).

The only reason for using an artificial language like that is to avoid charges of favoritism, which are usually part-and-parcel of nationalism. Choosing something like Nweh or Ge'ez, Brahui or even Quechua would fix that but produce the same problem that the EU linguistic empowerful dweebs run into. They euphemistically call it "language planning."

You can't use a lot of languages for all the things that Russian, English, or (now) even Chinese are used for. They lack the registers, the explicit grammar needed for the convoluted hypotaxis that formal legal documents typically need; the range of vocabulary needed for expressing everything from folklore to quantum physics and LCD engineering. The EU (and countries like Canada) have banks of linguists that spend their lives producing lists of the officially endorsed words for these ideas. So if you want to be a Galician engineer at a Galician-language conference you need to learn the words in Galician for the paper you wrote in English or French or German (where such vocabulary has been worked out of the course of the last century by common consent and more than a little wrangling). The Czechs did something like this in the 1920s, building on puristic work from the 1800s.

[Posteritatis]

66. I am dumber for having read this OP. (nt)

[Lithos]

75. Best answer

+1

[awoke_in_2003]

67. Make it offical. nt

[jpak]

68. English is thoroughly laughable pseudo-language

pitui

[Coyotl]

70. Mandarin please.

English is one of the most screwed up languages ever assembled.

[Lithos]

74. So is Mandarin

Most languages are screwed up, comes from their adaptability.

L-

[Lithos]

73. What an absurd notion

Wrong on so many levels.

Go watch Trainspotting and tell me just how much of the movie you think would translate to another English speaker in India? Same for Chinese - I know of several ostensibly Mandarin speakers who have a hard time understanding each other. French - Parisians have a hard time understanding the creole of Quebec or Louisiana (archaic). etc.

Similarly, the second you make any language standard - by being a super grammar nazi, you have essentially made it a dead language in that no one will speak it.

L-

[thucythucy]

79. Old joke I first heard in Europe:

Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A: Trilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A: American.

[sadbear]

80. Google is on the case. (Google translate)

And I hear they're working on a version of Douglas Adams' babel fish as we speak.

[99Forever]

81. Yeah sure...

... 'cuz that "spreading democracy" and making other nations into little Americas has worked so fucking great, hasn't it?

[Agnosticsherbet]

82. Why should people be encouraged to abandon their culture?

We should educate people to speak more than one language rather than advocate for one language.

[Glassunion]

86. I hate the idea.

Their is a problem with you're idea of making are language the universal language of the world. Eye fore one do not think that our language is the easiest won to learn, and can bee quite confusing when trying to get a point across. Sea what eye mean?

Other languages are arranged where a thought can be simply put to words by how they are arranged. English does this through punctuation, however leaving the words in the same order.

"Let's go eat, grandma."
"Let's go eat grandma."

Those two phrases say exactly the same thing, however have completely different meanings.

I vote for French if we need to settle on a language.

[southernyankeebelle]

87. Many countries have the english language taught in their

schools as second languages. I know my Italain cousin told me when he was in grade school that had a choice between english or french. They had to take one of or the other.

[bluedigger]

88. yIDoghQo'

[RebelOne]

93. Actually, I think it is.

I have been in many countries and most of the people speak English as their second language.

[Separation]

95. It kinda already is.

English is the primary language while flying as far as I know.

[cherokeeprogressive]

97. I'm okay with that. Imperial System of measurement too.

Why stop with the language?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

98. Esperanto, designed for just that purpose, much better than Spanish or Englis

[hunter]

120. Esperanto is unnecessarily difficult for non-European language speakers.

It has a very strong European bias.

A constructed language meant to avoid this European bias is Lojban.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

I know people who learn new languages easily, and shift fluidly among languages when they have a multi-lingual audience, but I'm not one of them.

[Jenoch]

104. There arw

about 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.2 billion Indians (among orhers) that might disagree with you. (However I suspect this thread was started to make some other point although I confess I have not read any of the responses).

[randome]

107. But most of those people are not widely dispersed throughout the world.

The OP's contention, I believe, is that English is used across a more diverse geographical area.

[Confusious]

110. Actually, the Indians wouldn't disagree

English is an official language of India.

Many people there use it, because they have different dialects of hindi and having to learn a different dialect might create hard feelings, so English is the neutral language.

[War Horse]

115. "English is an official language of India."

I most certainly is. Good post. Indian (spoken) English takes getting some getting used to for us Westerners, though. But it's easy to get once you get used to it

[Jenoch]

162. I did not know that.

[MannyGoldstein]

111. The best way to do it is to not do it

It pretty much is the language of the world, or at least the lingua franca. If that's made official, then people will get upset and fight it.

A smart rabbi once told me that Jews (in general) tend to become more secular when not being persecuted, but when governments have actually tried to attack or banish the religion, we become more religious. I suspect this more generally shows that when you try to take something away from people, it becomes more important.

[actslikeacarrot]

114. I think the official language...

...should be interpretive dance. Could lead to some interesting scenarios.

[Confusious]

117. Lol! I would vote for that!

Get boner to dance about his hate for Obama!

[Warpy]

116. It's already the de facto world language in things like aviation

but I would hope the world would pick an easier language for a worldwide one.

Spanish is beautifully logical compared to English. Mandarin is a really simple spoken language.

There are many other alternatives.

Just not English, please. Even people who have heard it all their lives managed to mangle it.

[War Horse]

118. There's a saying among translators

"You can never become 100 % fluent in any language that isn't your native tongue".

There's a lot of truth to that. Proficient, yes. 100 % fluent? Sometimes pretty close, but rarely.

[Puha Ekapi]

119. Instead of promoting a single European...

...language, much more work should be done to ensure the survival of the world's endangered languages.

[bhikkhu]

121. Whose English? And what would that mean?

Why do we need laws about what people should speak anyway?

I don't have any problem with the language, or with the idea that a common language would be a good thing, but there's all sorts of problems with regulating a language. Languages grow and change and migrate by themselves over the years; if you try to pin them down to one set of words and pronunciations, they die. That's Latin, and Sanskrit and so forth...and English sooner or later.

Just hang out in a club or a bowling alley or anywhere that people talk among themselves naturally - if you write down what you hear and take a good look at it, very seldom are the written rules of the language followed, and the movement is consistently away, one generation to the next.

[GoneOffShore]

125. With thanks to Backscatter712 -

[limpyhobbler]

128. LOL

+1

[whistler162]

130. Which is it English or American?

[Kalidurga]

146. I'm American I took English as a second language.

Grew up speaking hillbilly (til the age of 5 it was all I spoke).

[DonCoquixote]

136. Some good and bad

One the one hand:

English is a pidgin tongue, made when a bunch of French, Germans, Celts, Romans and Scandinavians found themselves on some island that was South of Iceland (aka Britain.) It is not as elegant as some, but that is because it allows itself to absorb other words. Look at these words:

Nuance (French), Zeitgeist (German), Ninja (Japan), Jumbo (Swahili), Alcohol (Arabic), Ketchup (Chinese), these words and many more are words that would not work with other languages, but English can make them work together.

On the other hand:

We do need to be careful that a language does not become an instrument of cultural dominance. Every Language can be corrupted into that, certainly English, French, Latin, Arabic and others have been used to undermine native cultures out of existence. The ideal thing would be two have several commonly known languages...but ones that are NOT artificial, ones that have active development, from newspapers to web sites to radio broadcasts.

As much as I love Esparanto (Bonvenon!), it is simply not that widespread,and it does have a very European bias. I do not know if it is possible to make an Asian equivalent,perhaps something that mixes Korean, Japanese, Hindu and Mandarin, but even if they could, it would still be one voice among many.

[raccoon]

137. No, no, no! I vote for Spanish. English spelling is so effed up.

Spanish has phonetic spelling.

If I'mm reading aloud and come across a word I don't know, I can pronounce it without hearing someone say it.

I can hear a word and most of the time, just from hearing it, know how to spell it.


In English there are so many words that have antiquated spelling with letters that are no longer needed.

For example, night, light, bright.

Worse yet:

through
tough
bough
cough

Spelled alike but aren't pronounced alike.

And I've only scratched the surface here.

[dorkulon]

138. How about we all sprout wings and fly around pooping cinnamon rolls for our hungry animal friends?

I mean, while we're dreaming...

[Buns_of_Fire]

139. What? Force the teabaggers to learn a new language?

Damn. And here I was just starting to pick up Dumfuk (their "offical" language), too.

[Ken Burch]

142. What would that mean? Would everyone be forbidden to speak any OTHER languages? n/t.

[hedgehog]

143. No need to declare it an official language, it is already the language spoken in more places than

any other.

It's frustrating for an American to choose a second language. Everyone else's default is their own language, English, and maybe a third or fourth. Even if an American selects one foreign language, we end up speaking English if the group includes more than one other language.

[Ken Burch]

144. On the numbers, there's a far stronger case for making Mandarin the world language. n/t.

[Hekate]

148. English has been the language of international business for most of a century already

Have you not noticed this? It is the language of airline pilots and air traffic controllers. It is the language of research scientists and medicine and education in a host of areas. English is particularly useful for conducting business in cultures with a strong hierarchical and gender bias built into their own language. Everywhere that the British colonized a form of English is now spoken and taught, but nowhere does it supplant the original languages. It is useful, and so it has spread.

Why on Earth would you want to make a law about it? Languages carry culture and ways of thinking and seeing the world and interacting. Ours is not the only way of thinking and acting in the world -- in some ways we are very destructive of that world, and our very use of language blinds us to it. We need to have the others as well, to save the planet if nothing else. Trying to impose a single language on all nations by law would cause generations of war and destroy all that has been built up by the needs of commerce, science, medicine, and so on. Our country is not the only place where these things take place, and in fact in many ways we now lag behind -- but English is flexible and it is useful, and America is still politically powerful.

Think it over. We need diversity of language and culture to survive.

[Historic NY]

149. All airline pilots must communicate in English.

[Egalitarian Thug]

150. It is already the de facto lingua franca (irony smiley goes here), so what's the issues? n/t

[cheapdate]

152. Absurd. n/t

[Number23]

153. I am sincerely hoping that you are joking when you say that the world speaking English would be

considered "American-centric."

Quite possibly the dumbest post I have ever seen here. Ever. Wow.

[RKP5637]

177. If one wanted a more explicit language it should in fact be German not English. n/t

[lunasun]

154. Mandarin or Spanish unless your "world" is very very small and centrally located near you

English is not the most spoken so you would have to change.
Do you want to in order to have uniformity? I will guess not
next brainstorm?
Mandarin 840 MIl + 180 mil(2nd language)
English 340 mil + 510 mil (2nd langauge)

[Confusious]

172. Your world must be small. 1.8 billion people speak English

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world.[4]

27% of the population of the earth, based on a population of 6 billion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

[cvoogt]

158. Waar heeft iedereen het toch over?

Ich kann gar nichts verstehen.

[Jenoch]

166. "...let's have English officially recognized as the world language."

What is interesting about this topic is that English is not even the officially designated language of the United States.

[treestar]

167. There's no governing body to enforce that

Informally, it may be close to it, however.

[AsahinaKimi]

171. meh...

愚かなポスト

[WinkyDink]

174. Hello? English pretty much IS the de facto world language.

[a la izquierda]

186. Um, no.

Language is more than just words. It's culture.

[Puha Ekapi]

188. +1000!

Exactly. The way you think, view the world and your relationship to others is closely tied to language.

[AZ Progressive]

187. Language is a unifier of culture within many cultures.

Thus for the people to not learn and speak their race / culture's language is like not being a part of one's culture. For instance, it's hard being latino without knowing and at least periodically speaking spanish.

Besides, English is the de facto standard language anyway worldwide (especially for business.) In countries like Japan it's even pretty much the official second language (with many signs being printed in english.)

[RB TexLa]

191. Really? We should be putting Anglo-Saxon culture in the ashbin of history. Name one people who

were better off after being forced to use English. I mean out of the ones who weren't slaughtered or starved to death.

[A HERETIC I AM]

192. The Peoples Front of Judea?