More proof the world should only speak one language

[NineOfClubs]

French. Kill it.

Ouch. With Latin, French is the only other language I know a smattering of.

Let's let it live, if only in enclaves.

 

[Telstra]

Oh. That settles it then. English it is!

Yep, English is fine by me.
my 1st language is not English by the way

 

[LilBit]

my 1st language is not English by the way

I never would have guessed.

 

[Telstra]

I never would have guessed.

your name is LilBit.

 

[Críostóir]

We're not discussing markets here.

Let's be accurate here. You don't understand why markets are relevant here. This is exactly an issue of markets. Language is a currency in which ideas are traded and priced.

I guess I don't have to worry about your project getting anywhere, since you disparage the value of science in these matters, and champion ignorance.

You could run for office as a Republican, and probably win, but as for promoting a universal language, not so much.

 

[bulge]

The more languages split up, the better, the more new worlds are created. Each new world gives insight in something else. I am a different person according to the language I speak. I think otherwise. I sleep otherwise. So, split up all languages. Split up, split up so that we know where we come from in this stupid globalised world.

Why did Germans perform so well in science and philosophy, would you think?

 

[Telstra]

Well, in that case, then we should all return to the Tower of Babel where it all began.

No evidence.
A very good fairy tale story i must admit

 

[BearBoi]

and you are telling me it wouldn't be better just to force the bastards to speak English?
Yeah...okay.

If we are going by raw numbers, than the most spoken language on earth is actually Chinese.

 

[LilBit]

your name is LilBit.

And you're a phone company.

 

[bankside]

And by what kind of brutal worldwide dictatorship will you accomplish that? No one has ever done that, not even in France, which is the most linguistically-controlled place on the planet. In the broadly-spoken linguas franca we know of, pronunciation is a local matter; no one tries to speak Swahili with a native accent (the small number of native speakers do it without trying; the rest don't bother).

Unless you do something very different than the previous ones did, it kinda does.

Actually, I'm sure you've heard of "simplified chinese." That's the kind of brutal dictatorship that can impose those kinds of standards, and now the government that achieved standardisation is internet-powered. As you point out, it is that imposed standard which facilitates inter-dialect communication.

I dare say it is working rather as planned. Centrally planned, that is! :dr-evil-pinky-smiley:

And in general English is quite compact. Chains of nouns modifying each other are one good example; try translating "There's been a malfunction of the White House press briefing room podium sound equipment" into any Romance language, and you'll see one reason English is so widely used.

"Le président Bush est au micro, et ça ne fait pas de bon sens."

In brief, morphophonemic tagging should trump phonemic spelling. Always and forever.

Pffffft. That reduces English words to hieroglyphs. Better to restore them to their proper pronunciation.

Well, spell it that way in Ukland if you wanna. We fought a war not to have to do what the Brits tell us, remember!

Well, geez, y'all shoulda thought a' that before creating the biggest Empire the world has ever known, ya know? Too late now. It's your karma to hear "your" language mangled by everyone else in the world!

As far as English goes...England is a tiny backwater in the English-speaking world. Since English is not French, there's no one with official authority over what is and is not English; the majority of English speakers speak it as a second or third language, and most of them are in Asia.

As it happens, I'm Canadian. But I'm happy to defend the Empire; we're quite content with our Commonwealth connexions, and actually our connexions to La francophonie. Also, we have a good deal of skill in skipping merrily from one lingua franca to another...well, at least from the lingua franca to the lingua angli... Multiple languages are less trouble than people think.

Incidentally, the Empire taught people to speak English not so they could communicate so much as understand instructions. You might think people would be willing to relinquish a language bequeathed to them on those terms. And although (sadly) there is no Académie anglaise, I would still have to say that England itself should have some say over the language: whatever one's accent, patois, dialect, heritage, or reason for choosing to speak English, if it isn't intelligible to someone from England, it isn't English.

Long Live the Queen! Long Live the Queen's English! and most of all, Long Live Prescriptive Linguistics!

 

[DJ1990]

I wish poop and urine smelled good....that would improve the quality of life.

 

[Telstra]

And you're a phone company.

how do you know. your not an Australian citizen

 

[Críostóir]

[STRIKE]Long Live[/STRIKE] Death to the Queen's English! and most of all, [STRIKE]Long Live[/STRIKE] Death to Prescriptive Linguistics!

FTFY.

If I thought you were serious about any of that, I'd be really mad. Fortunately I know you're not insane or ignorant, so I assume you're kidding.

Mostly.

 

[Críostóir]

The word for open but y-band footwear is one example: flip-flops (USA), slippers (English translation in Philippines), thongs (Australia), Jandals (New Zealand).

Also zoris.

A bit harsh, don't you think?
Did you have a bad day at the office?
Not getting enough?

I said following traditions tends to stifle innovation. I didn't disparage science and extol ignorance.

Read back. I presented science and you said it didn't count. Every time I talked about the past results of fake languages you denied that it was evidence.

Also: you want to avoid everything that makes a language hard to learn. That makes it impossible to create a universal language, because different things are hard to learn for different native languages.

You wouldn't want to have more than 14 phonemes because that might make it harder for Hawaiians to learn. But you can't have particles that distinguish verbs, nouns, and adjectives because that makes it harder for NON-Hawaiians. You can't have tones, because that makes it hard for non-tone-language natives, but you can't have complicated morphology because that makes it harder for languages with simple morphology (like most tone languages).

Languages have to have complexity somewhere, or they can't be minimally functional for communication. This is just a question of information space. If you make a language simple in every respect, it ceases to be a language, and just becomes a system of icons. If you're willing to settle for "danger," "toxic," and "don't walk," you're fine. Otherwise you can forget it.

That's science (linguistics). If you don't like it, it's still true.

 

[bankside]

Actually I do think the language will stabilise. We have an unprecedented ability to document how the language is spoken, and to transmit that to subsequent generations in print, audio, and video. To a certain extent, it will happen naturally and inevitably, which will make it seem all "intrinsic" and "organic" and thus pleasing to descriptive linguists. But stabilise it will.

As for my other points, alas, I'm not kidding. (Mostly. ) I think there is such a thing as an elevated form of language. I don't assume that is the sole barometer of the value of whatever a person says, however I do assume that when a person wants to say something valuable, they should aspire to say it in an elevated form of English.

The Queen's English? English by royal fiat? No; not per se. But the fact is, when you have access to the world's greatest educational resources, libraries and palaces full of every kind of literature, and when some of the world's greatest orators have served as your ministers for 60 years, and when everything you say is likely to be reported in the media, you learn a few things about expressing yourself elegantly, precisely, and consistently. To me that is all that is required, and it comes about not by divine right, but just because of circumstance.

I am an elitist in that I think we should all aspire to do math like Einstein, gardening like Olmsted, surgery like Christiaan Barnard, scuba like Jacques Cousteau, and English, yes, like Shakespeare, Churchill, Austen, Dickens, Poe, Wilde, and so on. We might not all attain perfection, but we can aspire to what the greatest of our luminaries have produced.

One might note that Shakespeare stands apart a bit in terms of accessibility: one has to work at understanding his use of the language, and it is certainly unfamiliar to our everyday usage, and you might argue that we've lost nothing for having made that effort and gained the later works of other authors from the innovation. Later authors sound more comfortable to our ears.

Yet, this drift has for the most part accomplished nothing more than to deprive a lot of people of Shakespeare's meaning. Drift is not a necessary precondition of innovation; it merely acts as evidence of the early fragility, instability, and insularity of our great language. Stability will come, and it is laudable, essential, and desirable. It will connect generations of English speakers across time, and improve our access to the collective brilliance of our linguistic community. And people will still have fresh ideas.

 

[Lube]

Is maith liom Gaeilge.

B'fhearr liom Gaeilge!

An labhraíonn tú Gaeilge?

Labhraím.

Bhuel, sorta.

And English is so interesting because it has a base of Germanic roots, with a Romance icing.

 

[Críostóir]

I responded that all that training and experience might be repressing the creativity required to think outside the box and discover/invent the solution that has eluded all past generations.

That IS the anti-science party line. Anyone who knows anything must be hampered by it, and the ignorant will save them. This is foolishness.

 

[Críostóir]

If what you've been doing is working, then keep doing it.
If it hasn't been working, the wise thing to do would be to consider trying something different.

Everything you've suggested as a path to a universal artificial language has been tried, and failed miserably. Loglan is one of the worst failures EVER and it's the one closest to what you've been proposing.

But you don't listen when I say that. You just keep insisting that This Time It Will Work. That's not just foolish, it's crazy.

 

[Críostóir]

Like I said, Portugal would have been the furthest west Columbus would have sailed if it had been up to you.

And we would have had to make do with Amerigo Vespucci and Eric the Red, and maybe Columbus' orgy of murder in the Western Hemisphere wouldn't have taken place.

 

[DJ1990]

English is already the universal language dummies.
It's just annoying that people still hold on to their native language too.