The perfect place for ideas that are totally insane, making them far too hot to be thrown away.
By Tommahawk
#1915
I though up this idea and I think its a pretty good one.

We should formulate a global language based on all existing languages and produce a standard for a uni-lateral communication protocol. Heres the details,

First of all we need a book which documents the dictionaries of every known spoken language in the world. For example every word which means Hello in every language.

From this book we can produce a space-age education programme based on the book so students can learn all the languages in the world in about 2 or 3 years.

even if the students don't understand it, it would still kick ass over the language studies we have in our schools today and they get to keep the global dictionary if they ever need it.

We alreay have a number of words that mean the same thing, such as Hello and Greetings it would be wonderful if we could add e.g Bonjour and e.g Ciao and make them a part of our formal greetings as well. If doesn't really matter if their are 100 different words to say hello, the choice of word is yours.
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By Michael D. Grissom
#2356
This has been done and there is a name for the language. I can't remember the name but it shouldn't be too hard to find via internet searches. If you find it, please post the info back here. I can't stand it when I forget something as important as this. I may go do a little searching myself because this subject came up at a party a few months ago and I couldn't remember then either. GRRRR
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By Michael D. Grissom
#2357
found it with with search on "universal world language".
The language name appears to be "Esperanto".
This is a copy paste of the top page from the search:


The primary mission statement of the World Language Process is:

To further world peace through the world understanding
which will be achieved by having One World Language.

The primary philosophical goal of the World Language Process is a Universal World Language. As a stage towards that goal it seeks to promote the concept of a Universal Auxiliary Language (AIL -Auxiliary International Language, IAL -International Auxiliary Language) that everyone would learn in addition to their mother tongue.

The concept or goal of a IAL has not yet reached a kindling point in the conciousness of humanity or its leaders. Until such a kindling point occurs, the World Language Process, in addition to trying to raise that conciousness, is trying to identify concepts, experiments, and efforts that are directed towards or supportive and compatible with the goal. These it tries to support and learn from. It is hoped that at not some too far off future day there will be broader desire for this information.

The current secondary mission statement of the World Language Process is:

To further world literacy and communication through the ACCESS Project.

To obtain experience in the methodology of developing an IAL, the World Language Process has put extensive effort into the the development of the ACCESS System (Auxiliary Closed Captioned English with Simplified Spelling) and its ANJeL Tun as described below. However, it should be emphasized that the World Language Process is in NO way 'soley committed' to the ANJeL Tun and that it will willing, happily and cheerfully support instead any IAL that humanity may select.

However, in the interim, with the ACCESS System we hope to provide economically deprived individuals in developing countries an opportunity to learn to speak English as a second language so that they may improve their economic situation.

Organization of the World Language Process

The World Language Process is a non-profit organization with Chancellors in over 30 countries and hundreds of volunteers throughout the world. Its members are dedicated to furthering world peace through education, literacy and world understanding.

The World Language Process is neither officially or unofficially associated with any religious or political organization of any kind and has no hidden agenda. It is a program of UNKOMMON (UNiversala KOMmunikado por la MONdo- Esperanto for "Universal Communication for the World") Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting attempts towards a universal auxiliary language, and it is a project of the IAEWP (International Association of Educators for World Peace) which is an NGO to the United Nations since 1973 and UNESCO since 1975.
By lupus
#3738
Hello,
Well, the only problem as I understand it, is that Esperanto is based upon European languages. Is this an incorrect understanding? This 'universal' language does not account for incorporating and ergative languages. (most european languages are nom-acc).

Noam Chomasky has advanced the idea of universal grammar, which is controversial, but to me its the closest thing to trying to explain what is in common in all human languages. Building a universal vocabulary would be far more difficult.

Out of all the possible languages, (which is estimated in the billions)humans have only come up with a few thousand. An interesting fact. I can only speculate as to why the numbers would be so few. (insert standard smily face)
James
By MissPlayful
#3767
My comments are from one who speaks only English. Maybe you have a different view, particularly if English is not your first language.

In the real world I doubt if Esperanto or any other invented language would stand a realistic chance of gaining a global foothold. Rather than inventing a new language which is an extremely complex thing to do, and then persuading the peoples of every country around the world to learn it, it would be much easier to adopt one of the currently spoken languages as a global language. But I don’t think this will require any conscious planning at all, I think it will all happen naturally.

It seems to me that English is likely to become the equivalent of your “global language” as it outgrows and outcompetes other languages in areas of world communication such as the internet. This doesn’t mean that all other languages will be slowly abandoned, although they may be - who knows in the long term, it simply means that eventually most people around the world will learn English at an early age as one of their languages. And I reckon this will happen spontaneously within the next century or so.

Just think of the vast complexity of the English language (or any other widely spoken language we could use) - the dictionaries, the books, songs, science and art etc, the number of people who already speak it and write it and read it, the hundreds of thousands of words in it. While inventing a global language has some fanciful appeal as a great human undertaking, the widely spoken languages of the world have taken thousands of years to develop to their present level of complexity and utility. While you are trying to reinvent this wheel, the English language bandwagon will be rolling on with ever increasing momentum, leaving you sitting on the ground in a cloud of slowly settling dust. There’s an old saying “Don’t fight a war you can’t win.” Much better to jump on the bandwagon and work to improve it rather than trying to stop the tide rolling in.
By lupus
#3827
Hello,
I am a native speaker of English. I have a bias in that reguard. Honestly, I do have a difficult time with waiting on customers that do not speak it well. usually its enough to complete the transaction, but its mostly difficult from the stand point of not being able to understand them.

Some countries have chosen English as the offical language, as some countries have thousands of languages. Some however have chosen a popular native language to the country. For example, I believe that India has chosen Hindi, and the Philipians have chosen tagalog.

English is by far the language with the most speakers, Spainish is a close second, I believe mandarin is third. The chances of there being more english speakers are very great. Certainly, I will not be a dying language anytime soon.

My point is that the attempts to formulate a truely universal langange is biased. American and European science, culture, industry and religion is biased as far as the language biases things. As I understand it ANY language can be used to describe anything in technical terms. One shouldn't discount a minority language just because there are few speakers. (such as Zuni or Eyak)

Thank you! Have a good day!
By lupus
#3828
Hi again, sorry I have periodic use with time limits...
More thoughts...common sense says that a natural language would be more easily adaptible to make universal, especially if there are more speakers. This is an assumption.

Certainly, I hope that there is the possibility to go beyond, "common sense" (rising above the most common belief held by the most people) Maybe there is some universal language that can be constructed which isn't very difficult for all people to learn, and without doing damage to their own native language.

This is a sensitive issue for me, as I feel a loss because my parents didn't teach me anything other than english. My experience has been that I feel more enriched from learning what I have learned of my ancestral language.

James
By Rishi
#4496
Any comments on language stirs up a hornet's nest in most countries. In India certainly. Riots break out, passions rise, life and property lost over an y real or imagined slight to one language or other.

I for one had my entire schooling, including pre schooling, in English, and so like MissPlayful am probably biased towards it. English is also the language we use at home most of the time. It does not reflect any credit to me that I formally learnt my own mother toungue Tamil(That too as a second language!) only in college in my 14 th year of schooling.

I also learnt Esperanto with its simplified grammar. There are only 16 rules and no exceptions. (Think of the French irregular verbs) and the horrors of English spelling and pronounciation.

Regretfully I have to agree with MissPlayful that none of these contrived languages stood the test of common usage. In a posting elsewhere on common names for 30 and 10 cms I mentioned about George Bernard Shaw's 'improved' English alphabet(I learnt that too). Other than Shaw's own 'Androcles and the Lion' (Penguin Books) and a letter club I have not seen much popular use of these. Not many know that a 'better' language ESPERANTIDO was constructed to be one up on Esperanto.

The best option is to promote one existing language, if necessary removing some anamolies, as the universal language. (My vote unashamedly is for English)

Countries like Thailand already use the Roman alphabet for their own language on product labels etc.

But nationalism, regionalism(English permits such abominable constructs) and politics will keep at bay attempts to make any current language Universal. We can always hope.

Rishi
By pura vida
#7142
Sona, Dunia, Ygyde? Each has a different concept. Sona combines languages of different roots, prefixes, suffixes, grammar etc. Dunia just directly takes out words from each of the world's most spoken languages to fit in a sentence. Ygyde is a +/- idea to simplify a word's meaning
By icingbase40
#9029
Language is something that is developed and cant be invented. Evolution of language is as complex as the evolution of universe itself. Mother Nature decided how language has to evolved based on climate, nature of people, people's physiology, etc.

For e.g. my mother tongue is Tamil which contains no complex consonant sounds like kra, dha, sha, ksha. After each consonant, 99% a vowel follows it. So if I find it difficult to pronounce these complex consonant sounds and in turn I have to strain my vocal chords.

@lupus: India has just suggested a link language. But we find English to be more important next to our mother tongue as it has worldwide acceptance and it is the language of science, technology, business and economy. I am well versed at both English and Tamil(Mothertongue)
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