Caithfimid nios mo Gaelige a labhairt i mo thuairim.

Maidir leis ceist an OP, is leir go mbeidh an domhain ait nios fearr. ldo

I'm even more optimistic and believe that global language differences are very easy to solve in the next 100 years because of technological developments.

Not only do I doubt it, I am confident that it's virtually certain not to happen.

The basic problem is that not everyone wants to talk about the same things. I believe there is such a thing as a "best" language given a particular field of discourse, but it's abundantly clear that different groups of people have different priorities for what's deserving of a short and easy word. A universal language would facilitate certain kinds of communication, and greatly frustrate others.

The same is just as true of computer programming languages. There's a reason to have platform-independent languages, so that we can run software on any computer we face ... but there is also a reason for more than one language (even more than one platform-independent language!) for different purposes: ease of writing vs ease of use vs raw speed vs whatever else.




If you mean being able to tell how a word is pronounced by looking at it, I generally agree. If you're proposing re-spelling words to match how they sound... sorry but we don't all pronounce words the same way (or even agree on how many sounds there are in our languages.)


I don't have any data handy. I expect the number has fallen dramatically. (And I would expect the number to continue falling as long as languages become more global.) The number who speak 3 or more has probably fallen even more dramatically.

They don't need to be. There are already a handful of major languages used in global commerce, and the overlap of languages and strategies of multinationals makes such a pursuit economically irrelevant.

Siegmund is right basically.

Languages evolve through use and are influenced by other languages.

English itself can be distinguished into multiple instances. The English in New York is different than the English in London, and even moreso in Hong Kong.

That doesn't take into account regional differences and vocabularies.

In a simplistic sense, you might as well be trying to homogenize hair color across the globe. It's just not gonna happen.

If this is the case, why do communities end up speaking the same language? Why does (almost) everyone in a given city or state or area end up speaking the same language, dialects aside?

What is an example of a kind of communication that would be greatly frustrated by having all parties share a language?

It would be better if language were eliminated completely and we lived in silence with no written word.

Je ne suis pas d'accord!

I understand your position and I agree that it is not economically feasible to spend lots of research money at this moment to be able to construct a device that translates language. What I meant is that because of so many technological advancements coming our way, this sort of problem is really a simple feat to achieve in the next century. I mean speaking to someone in another language directly in real time is not possible now, but it will be.