[Aaargh20318]

I’m a Dutch native and if it were up to me we’d switch to English. I think it’s dumb that small country like us feels the need to maintain its own language.

It is a massive disadvantage. It means that we’re always late with new stuff because the Dutch market is so small no one wants to make the effort of building Dutch versions.

[embedding-shape]

I'm a native Swede and I've said the same about Swedish to, don't really care if it's Mandarin, English or Spanish, just that as many countries as possible go together and unify under one language. Obviously both for Netherlands and Sweden, English would be the way to go, but imagine if you could learn just 3 languages and speak with 90% of the world's population? I thought globalism would take us there eventually somehow, but seems the pendulum started swinging the other way instead.

[numpad0]

FWIW, Mandarin is not the universal spoken language of China. It's just the lingua franca of China as the region. They actually have something like a dozen major groups of dialects with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.

The place read as Shang-hai in Mandarin is apparently read Zan-he in the local "dialect" spoken there. I think one could say Koln and Cologne sound closer together.

[pessimizer]

Did anyone say that Mandarin is the "universal spoken language" of China? IIRC, >90% of Chinese people speak Mandarin as either a 1st or 2nd language.

I don't think as many did 20 years ago, but China is consciously Mandarinizing, and English has lost its spot as the standard second language with the vastly increasing hostility from the West.

[bluecalm]

Yup, there is a lot of value in having universal language and English is the only one with a chance (in Western world anyway). Imo EU should mandate English as 2nd official language for all business dealings and bureaucracy. Having many languages and obligatory translations is a huge disadvantage we have in comparison to USA (or China).

[Pay08]

Language is the biggest thing that defines culture. Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?

[embedding-shape]

> Language is the biggest thing that defines culture

Lots of countries would disagree with this. Do you not think Peru and Spain has distinct cultures for example? Why/why not?

[Pay08]

As you can clearly see, I did not say language was the only thing that defines culture.

Do you think Peruvian culture is closer to Spanish or Swedish culture?

[embedding-shape]

Your second question, "Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?", really makes it unclear if you actually realize that language isn't the only thing that defines culture, why would that be a question otherwise?

[Aaargh20318]

Yes, I’m a huge proponent of global unification. It’s ridiculous that we have different cultures, languages and laws based on between which imaginary lines on a map you live.

Countries make no sense to me. Look at the current situation in Iran. Everyone on the planet is affected by the actions of a president we didn’t vote for. Earth should be a single country.

[lentil_soup]

What a sad world where we all have the same culture and language. There's many concepts that don't translate from one language to the next, they form a way of looking at the world. What about foods, and stories and music, nah, sounds terrible.

I also want one big world for all but definitely not a single culture or language

[LinXitoW]

So there's only one single culture in all english speaking countries? A unified language does not in any way imply a boring or "assimilated" culture. Dutch people can still ask their closest friend to Venmo them 2 bucks for the fries they took earlier, germans can still make and drink objectively better beer, and the french can still be black and white and smoking a cigarette. But just in english instead.

[lentil_soup]

OP literally advocated for having a single culture.

And you missed the part I said about how different human concepts don't exist in all languages, do we just not have those? Language is an integral part of different cultures, not the only one, but a pretty big one. Can't believe I'm having to defend this.

[Pay08]

Frankly, this belies a complete lack of understanding of how the world works.

[mihaelm]

Small countries are already doing this through the Internet since so much of the consumed content is in English.