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Your Pick For An Alternate Universal Language


Baburra

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I've always imagined what it would be like if the world just suddenly shifted to another universal language, for one reason or another. I always just imagined the successor to be Mandarin (Chinese). I don't really have any particular reason as to why my mind drifts to this conclusion when asked this question, but probably because the country itself has been gaining ground significantly in the last decade or so.

That said, as a personal preference, I wouldn't really choose it as a universal language, personally, even if I do speak it somewhat coherently at this point. If I had the power to choose, I'd probably pick Japanese, just because I think it could be more easily picked up by everyone and their tone of speaking is a little more pleasing to the ear than Chinese, in my opinion. So which language would you pick, if your were to replace English as the Universal Language, and why?

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Esperanto.  Since Esperanto is just an invented language, I think it'd offer equal oportunities to all the speakers to learn it and become fluent. Plus this language is supposed to be really easy to learn, it's also influenced by a lot existing languages. So most people around the world could learn it easily, not sure about chinese, japanese, israeli or russian people tho.

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  • 4 months later...

I'm not sure which language to pick.. Probably the one that is widely spoken by many countries, so I think it would have to be Spanish. The language must be popular to be able to replace English.

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I'd pick Arabic, because this is the only language that has not changed any bit in at least past 1400 years and it is assured to not change in future ever, so this would be the best universal language without a doubt.

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Romanian has a very solid and logical grammar. It would be useful for debating and talking about different aspects of society.

Politicians and world leaders should speak Romanian. Even though it's more difficult than English, it's also more complex.

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I never thought of this subject before. English has been implanted in me as a kid that it's the international language. I can't imagine any other language taking the helm actually. In fact, I don't think I would want it any other way.

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It would probably be best if there was a way to have a "neutral" language so that it didn't imply and sort of superiority of one language over another.  It also would keep politics out of the mix.  I am not a trekkie, but I would rather see Klingon than any real language.  With technology today, I am sure someone could write a program which could merge all languages into a sort of blend.  How diplomatic would that be?

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It would probably be best if there was a way to have a "neutral" language so that it didn't imply and sort of superiority of one language over another.  It also would keep politics out of the mix.  I am not a trekkie, but I would rather see Klingon than any real language.  With technology today, I am sure someone could write a program which could merge all languages into a sort of blend.  How diplomatic would that be?

If you were to blend languages together, then how would you determine which aspects of a language go into the main language, and which aspects don't?  Same with vocabulary.

Conlangs never really took off.  It's really hard to promote a language that nobody knows yet.

English became the global language because of the influence of the Anglosphere, but conlangs do not have the backing of a certain influence huge enough to be made into a lingua franca.

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That's a tough one I guess because I can't imagine anything other than English, and what would we do if this actually happened. However, I am always up for a challenge and I also choose Mandarin Chinese.  What a wonderful exciting time in our world when we all realized that we had to sit down together and learn one of the most difficult languages.  Could this be the beginning of world peace?? :wink:

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I am really happy with English. You can still communicate reasonably well in English even if you have only a very basic knowledge of the language. And I am often amazed how quickly children pick it up, even my uncle, who never spoke any other language than German, surprised me the other day with: "Hey, what's up?"

If it was up to me, I would want a language that is a combination between a universal sign language and supported by English.

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I've recently learned about Esperanto from this site? I found it fascinating. Especially considering it's a mix of several languages. I think that would be my pick if a universal language were possible.  :smile:

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We can imagine it to be any language, but I don't think our manking would have the ability to agree on an universal language, we are killing our planet and we don't even agree on stop doing it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Spanish could be an alternate universal language. It is a language that is already known by many. Also, a lot of people crave to learn it and even those who may not be eager to learn it do appreciate it.

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I'd have to go with Spanish as well. Part of the reason why is because so many people already know it. Another reason is because it's what I think to be one of the easier languages to learn (minus those stupid verb tenses!). The other reason is purely selfish. In regards to learning it, I'm at least halfway there and could easily get by!

More realistically though, I see a universal language being something more like Chinese.

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