[fighting]

While I agree that language policing like you see in France or the drive for culture preservation via language in various parts of the world is tragically misguided if not actively harmful, the one thing that gives pause is that we do not have a 'perfect' language in english by any means. Learning other languages and lingustic evolution gives hope that we can trend towards better options in the future. So lets not declare english as the winner just yet.

[zanny]

Absolutely, but at the same time it depends on what you value in a language. That is kind of what this whole conversation is about, after all. English is garbage from any compative measure of language quality, its grammar is irrational, it has thousands of edge cases, it does not even use the entire range of human auditory sounds. But that constitutes a linguists evaluation of it - for probably 99.9999% of human beings, language is there to facilitate communication, in which case all the grammar breaks and eccentricities go out the window for the singular overriding and essential value of - do you and the other person speak the same language?

That is why English is so important now, since about half the world knows it, and the difference between knowing it or not could be the difference between perpetual poverty and improving standards of living.

In the same way, the cultural aspect cannot be considered relevant as much as the grammar cannot be, because the importance of having a language to communicate is overwhelming. There will always be people that like languages and learn them, language diversity will never die, but I also would wonder how you could ever hope to replace English with something better. It is the kind of thing that logically should seem obvious - a university department of smart people, or a global consortium, could come together and try to architect a language optimized for everyone, that has firm grammar rules and uses all the auditory notes of the human voice range, and prioritizes making common words short and such. But once you make that language, how do you teach it to the world? And in between, are you proposing people learn English and Earthish at the same time?

[fighting]

Well english has replaced itself many times, just compare old english, middle english, Shakespeare vs now. It is evolution and english is good at adapting, but even so, in Roman times no one would have predicted English to dominate society. These things can change quite rapidly and history is not at an end by any means. And with the internet, I think the changes/evolution could be quite dramatic.

[cm2187]

What other language do you suggest we use instead? English as already de facto won. It is the modern latin.

[fighting]

What I would like to see is a language that is much more succinct, less bound in grammar rules/syntax but also less irregularities and ambiguities. English could evolve into this. Latin could have too but currently it is dead. Change happens.

[cm2187]

But again, what language? We are not talking about computer languages. This is not a theoretical exercise in an ideal software world where you can start all over again. It's going to be one of the mainstream languages. Which one? Russian? Chinese?

[fighting]

Yes, currently Chinese is the main alternative with the most population and has some of the features I mentioned. It is also great for business with many people learning it to attract some of the chinese money floating around and lots of foreigners there to make their fortunes. But just a couple of decades ago it was russian. A major war between the US and China and it might be Hindi next. Never safe to predict the future.

[douche]

Chinese has a really awful written form, as far as being something that people can learn to read and write in a short amount of time.

[seanmcdirmid]

And before that Japanese.

[cm2187]

I can safely predict that Chinese will not be used as the common language for Europe...