[sametmax]

Technical solutions are only a workaround, not a proper solution. A solution to a problem that have little benefit of existing anyway.

I think it's about time humanity decides to stop the ego trip and declare english as the earth official language.

No need to kill other languages, every people are free to use them as much as they want.

But really, all __new__ documents, medias, displays, pieces of information, should be translated to english as well. And it should be mandatory at school, as well as to get any administrative position.

I'm french. My country has a VERY strong view on the local language protection. But promoting your culture doesn't have to be in contradiction with reuniting humanity.

Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages. It's a waste of resources, and a hindrance to the most important challenges of humanity.

Esperanto never won, written chinese is way too complicated and english is already everywhere.

Before trying to share the same money, or abolish borders, live in harmony or reach any ideal at all, we gotta take the big rocks off the road. Not being able to understand your neighbor is a terrible curse for our specie, and easier to solve than war or famine. Actually it could be part of the solution to them.

And since those things take a long time, we better start now.

[dmreedy]

While having a trade language is quite a handy thing, for the reasons you enumerate, if you believe even a little bit in some degree of Linguistic Relativity, then there are significant consequences to reducing the general discourse, and the general thought-model, to a single homogeneous standard. It's not far off from attempting to solve race relationships (and gosh I'm not trying to be flippantly controversial here, I really do promise) by asserting that everyone should just be white. Yeah it'll address a lot of problems and reduce a lot of friction, but diversity does seem to be a strength of humanity's, not a weakness. Even if it does mean that the day to day is never as smooth as it could be if we were all just a little more the same.

[sametmax]

I'm not worrying about killing diversity.

Languages are not static, english would evolve local features, variations, incorporate things from other languages, and adapt to specialized needs and creativity.

Some alternative languages would survive anyway. Some new may develop.

How do you think we got those many languages in the first place ?

The important thing is that all people have a root base they can use to communicate. And official one that is formalized, used systematically and taught globally. Not that we seek to eradicate what's goes beyond the root.

The important thing is that all can fill the same administrative forms, understand each others laws, debate ideas with equal strength, share books, consume remote news, discover other countries, etc

[yosito]

I agree with you, but I think this makes more sense to someone in Europe where being multilingual is the norm. In the US, a lot of people only speak English which leads to at least two objections to this idea. First, and this is the objection I grew up with, many people see it as unfair to require everyone in the world to speak "our" language. And second, this is the one that concerns me more these days, is that being monolingual makes it harder to understand your neighbors even if they've learned the same language as you as a second language. In the US, we're extremely intolerant of people who have varying dialects or accents in English. In addition, if you don't speak a second language it's hard to be aware of which figures of speech and other idioms you may be using that make your own communication less clear.

Ultimately, I think we'll end up with English being the common language of humanity. We're already more than half way to that point in terms of geographical regions where one can communicate using English. And though it's not a perfect language, it's pretty well suited to wide scale usage since it's got a large vocabulary and relatively simple grammar. But I don't think having English as a universal language will be without problems.

[sametmax]

> First, and this is the objection I grew up with, many people see it as unfair to require everyone in the world to speak "our" language.

Yes, it's unfair. But we have more important problems. If humanity ends up picking up chinese I'll spend 10 years learning it. I don't care. A common language trumps those issues.

> . And second, this is the one that concerns me more these days, is that being monolingual makes it harder to understand your neighbors even if they've learned the same language as you as a second language.

You mean harder than the current situation where most people can't understand each others at all ?

> Ultimately, I think we'll end up with English being the common language of humanity.

If we don't make it so it's not going to be certain.

It's also too much of a slow process, and not enough of a formal one.

All those debates, all those arguments always ignore the big picture for some local smaller issues. Sometime you gotta bite the bullet and move on.

I'd say pick anything, I really couldn't care less. Klingon if you want.

But english is just the most likely candidate to succeed, being used in business, diplomacy and tech.

[rimliu]

What do you mean by "reuniting"? Was humanity ever more connected than it is now?

[nicolas_t]

Réunir in French means to unite multiple groups. It's different from the English reunite which means unite again.

[sametmax]

Thanks.

Even when speaking the same language, understanding each other can be hard. One more reason for a better english support in the human operating system.

[dmreedy]

before Babel, perhaps

[anoncoward111]

Ironically the only thing complicated about Chinese is its tonal pronunciations and writing system. It's grammar and vocabulary are markedly easier than English.

Additionally, English has some horrific consonant/vowel clusters and minimum pairs.

[pouetpouet]

The alphabet is a phenomenal invention. I mean the alphabet in the large sense, be it the Latin, Greek, Russian alphabet or any alphabet, abjad, abudiga or syllabary. The Chinese writing system is a notable exception (along with Japanese Kanji and some others). The only complicated thing about Chinese is pronunciation and writing system. So half of it is complicated. If a language can be characterized at least by phonology, writing system, grammar and vocabulary. Then Chinese is difficult. Not that any language is easy. There will never be an agreement for the whole world to speak Chinese.

[sametmax]

The alphabet, and punctuation.

Omitting punctuation, or using some meta language for it (e.g: in thai, repeatiting a word can mean "!") makes reading some text extra difficult.

[torstenvl]

I'm struggling to think of minimal pairs that are particularly difficult. Maybe those involving liquids, for East Asian learners?

French's minimal pairs involving [u] vs. [y] are terrible. Beaucoup vs. beau cul, au dessous vs. au dessus, etc.

[sametmax]

French, all in all, is a terrible language for ease of communication.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great language to write a novel in. Make an argument. Describe a country side.

But it's slow, convoluted and error prone.

All languages have weird stuff. Even English, while being incredibly easy, have many quirks, like in the joke: "Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

But french is more about learning exceptions among a few rules.

[sametmax]

Agreed but you can't change any of this.

[mrec]

> I'm french. My country has a VERY strong view on the local language protection. [...] Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages.

I can't find where I originally read this, but wasn't the French obsession with standardizing their language largely a response to the pre-Revolutionary period, when France was a giant patchwork of divergent dialects and you'd be hard-pressed to understand someone from the next village over?

[sametmax]

Yes, which funnily made Richelieu take measure to federate them all...

[posterboy]

> I think it's about time humanity decides to stop the ego trip and declare english as the earth official language.

Will the explanation be English? This wouldn't work of course. Would it be in a local language? That would be a self defeating paradox. Not constructive at all.

Edit: I mean language has to be self referential. And not just understandable, but understanding. How about you learn Spanish, Japanese or Arabic ... All of them for inclusions sake.

[CrystalLangUser]

This never will happen. People will never agree to upending their culture and language, even in supposed interests of humanity. [Whether this would actually work is arguable].

> You can preserve culture and language, while simultaneously forcing everyone to learn English.

Nope, because culture and language are deeply intertwined. Over time, people would use their native languages less and less, and then entire cultural swathes of knowledge will be lost.

Next, no one will ever agree on one language. Not English, not Chinese, nor any made up language. Especially not an existing real language, for any number of reasons.

There are also concepts in different languages that are difficult to translate or grasp in other languages. Translation isn't a 1:1 rote task.

> I think it's about time humanity decides to stop the ego trip and declare english as the earth official language.

There is no "ego trip" going on here. The only "ego trip" is assuming that we can simply force everyone, unilaterally, to speak X language.

> Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages. It's a waste of resources, and a hindrance to the most important challenges of humanity.

[Citation needed that this is better than forcing 1 language on humanity, which will almost certainly only happen with supreme military force, aka wars.]

> written chinese is way too complicated

Subjective.

---

Translation is a problem that we have to deal with, but it's better than trying to force one language.. People and societies cannot be engineered with a hand-wavy solution of "oh, just 1 universal language".

This is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint of blithely trying to "engineer" life and humanity, as if it were so simple.

[sametmax]

> This never will happen. People will never agree to upending their culture and language, even in supposed interests of humanity. [Whether this would actually work is arguable].

This worked for one country, so there are chances it works at a bigger scale.

However, I fail to see arguments that are serious enough to back up your "never", which is a pretty big word to avoid argumenting for somebody using "citation needed".

> Nope, because culture and language are deeply intertwined. Over time, people would use their native languages less and less, and then entire cultural swathes of knowledge will be lost.

That's not killing, that's letting die. Do you regret latin ? We are doing alright without it. But we can still read it if we need to.

The difference between killing and letting die is that people will stop using their languages after decades without feeling to be robbed of it, because they still could use it.

> Next, no one will ever agree on one language. Not English, not Chinese, nor any made up language. Especially not an existing real language, for any number of reasons.

Again with the huge, absolute assertions, without backup.

> There are also concepts in different languages that are difficult to translate or grasp in other languages. Translation isn't a 1:1 rote task.

Yes. Things are imperfect. We will loose in the process. Guess what is also imperfect ? Communicating at the scale of 7 billion people with different culture, believes and needs.

> There is no "ego trip" going on here. The only "ego trip" is assuming that we can simply force everyone, unilaterally, to speak X language.

Absolute sentences and lack of arguments are usually sourced in a strong emotional reactions more than logic. So my guess is there is some ego there.

>> Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages. It's a waste of resources, and a hindrance to the most important challenges of humanity.

> [Citation needed that this is better than forcing 1 language on humanity, which will almost certainly only happen with supreme military force, aka wars.]

Well, take 5 people speaking 2 languages each, but only one in common with another one. And 5 speaking the same language. Put them in a room and make work on project. Check which team accomplish the fastest the task at end.

>> written chinese is way too complicated

> Subjective.

The fact it takes 5 years to a chinese to be able to write english and 10 for an english to learn chinese is not subjective. Again, that's funny comming from somebody who is all emotional about this.

And I get it. I get that languages are an emotionally charged topic. But incomprehension is a problem hard enough when we speak the same language: see this very thread.

> This is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint of blithely trying to "engineer" life and humanity, as if it were so simple.

I don't know where you got from me that it was simple. Also, thinking I'm talking about engineering and not politics and sociology "is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint".

[CrystalLangUser]

What citations do you want me to provide? This is purely theoretical discussion. Do I need to cite that after millennia, we still have different languages?

Do I really to dig up some academic paper to acknowledge that humans find it hard to agree on standards? That doesn't even include the geopolitical implications of this- as if China would ever agree to make English the One Language that all government and business runs on, etc.

If you make a theoretical conjecture, I don't need to provide academical papers to provide a rebuttal. Please, treat academical papers with rigor, not as a fallback for when someone challenges you on, again, a theoretical conjecture. I also don't need to provide papers for basic human intercourse.

> This worked for one country, so there are chances it works at a bigger scale.

No, you cannot extrapolate based on one country. Human beings are irrational and proud. Again, look at it from a geopolitical view.

> Yes. Things are imperfect. We will loose in the process. Guess what is also imperfect ? Communicating at the scale of 7 billion people with different culture, believes and needs.

Yes, different cultures, beliefs, and needs. All of which would be lost by -unilaterally- forcing one language, since reaching agreement won't happen. Nations are still figuring out how to solve their own issues, so why should a Korean person care to be forced to learn some random language? That already happened when Japan occupied Korea and forced Koreans to learn Japanese- why don't you read some history and tell me exactly how much Koreans liked that. [This also goes back to my previous statement about military domination being the only real way of forcing a language change.]

> The fact it takes 5 years to a chinese to be able to write english and 10 for an english to learn chinese is not subjective.

[Citation needed again]. Of course English writing is easier to learn, it has a phonetic alphabet... However Chinese has much more simplified grammar than English. There is no subjectively "better" language, unless you specifically mean in 1 single aspect, maybe. But languages don't exist in vacuums, so this point is moot. (5/10 years is way off, also. This is anecdotal evidence as well, and years vary by each individual person.)

Discussing the merits of Chinese or any other language is really another discussion, but Chinese people do just fine.

> Again, that's funny comming from somebody who is all emotional about this.

No, this is coming from somebody responding to a shortsighted conjecture.

> Also, thinking I'm talking about engineering and not politics and sociology "is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint".

No, I don't think that you're talking about engineering. I'm specifically pointing out that you are treating a human and cultural issue from an engineering perspective, as if it's merely something that can be "fixed". It's a myopic viewpoint, because that's simply not how humans work.