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by dmreedy
2885 days ago
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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. |
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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