Comment on How would we choose a "world language" in a fair way, for a hypothetical one world government?
Fondots@lemmy.world 2 days agoI agree to a point, different languages and experiences can help to shape your mind in different ways which is overall a strength
However, if you’re not able to effectively communicate those thoughts to the people who need to hear them, it’s not doing anyone any good
I like the idea of an international auxiliary language, not to replace anyone’s primary language, but basically to be everyone’s second language.
Day-to-day I want everyone to keep using their native tongues, and where possible I’d like them to learn each other’s languages too. But there are some 7000+ languages in use around the world, no one can learn them all, and having a common language to fall back on could be incredibly useful for facilitating communications between different people
There have been a few attempts to come up with one over the years, either by selecting an existing language, or coming up with a constructed language, probably the most famous example of the latter is Esperanto, though that didn’t exactly take off the way its creator might’ve hoped.
Full disclosure - I’m teaching myself Esperanto. I am under no delusion that it’s ever going to fill that role as an international auxiliary language, and I’m not sure I’d want it to be, there’s plenty of valid criticism of it, and I think there could be better options
pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Honestly I think so menu little would be on board with something like this since so many people speak multiple languages. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine a world where even 50% of Americans would even try to learn a second language. I think many would outright refuse as a matter of anti intellectual and xenophobic ideology.
Fondots@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think your first sentence got a little butchered by autocorrect, I assume it’s supposed to say “so many people”
But I agree that America (and honestly many other primarily English speaking countries) would be a big holdout if anything but English was to be adopted as the auxiliary language. Many other countries would probably be somewhat more open to it, but it has been tried before and never seems to gain traction (esperanto almost had a moment in the early 20th century where an esperanto-speaking county was almost established and where it almost became a working language for the League of Nations- the latter never came to pass basically because the French threw a hissy fit over it.)
pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Your assumption is correct, thank you, I edited :)
I had no idea that there was ever actually a moment for Esperanto that got blocked! I figured it had just been dismissed out of hand since its inception.
Fondots@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, I don’t think it’s ever exactly been a widespread movement among the general world population, but there have been a few interesting examples of groups that have adopted it, and at times it’s been big enough to draw the notice of some fairly influential people, both positive and negative, and you can kind of imagine that maybe if things had gone just a little differently at a couple different points that it might have been able to gain some traction.