I was thinking it would be possible to pick a BEST overall language. You could rank languages on many different categories, including # of words, precision, whether it's easy to learn, if it coorelates with good performance elsewhere, etc...

All-In Flynn says

English is a very precise language, taking many more words to say what in Latin takes considerably less. Is precision worth the extra memory we have to use to learn words? Are some languages clearly better than others? What could be some negative effects?

the 'best language' would be predetermined by your definition of 'best language', and influenced by your personal perspective. english isn't more precise than other languages. it's inconsistent, and an amalgam of many different languages and dialects, and there are english phrases that take longer to say in latin. the reason english has twice as many words as french is because there is a group of people that decides what new words to allow into the french language. this is not true with english.
english will most likely become a near universal 1st or 2nd language on earth, as the internet and international trade and communication spread. this has nothing to do with whether it's better than any other language. it's merely a result of much bigger forces. latin wasn't the 'best' language when it was universal in europe, just the language of the conquering empire. just like french in the renaissance, or arabic in the muslim world, or chinese in asia...

Well, English contains almost the entire French vocabulary on account of England being under Normannic rule for quite some time, which by proxy means it has a lot of the latin Vocabulary, you have two almost complete vocabularies (Anglo-Saxon is the other) and a large portion of the Norse vocabulary from the Vikings.

It is debatable if this gives precision or lack thereof...I'd actually guess that it can give both. Like a high level computer language with many ways to the same destination I would think this puts the pressure on the user just as much as on on the language.

I don't think you'll be able to give the position English now has to other languages. For increasing precision, I'd actually go for increasing focus on maths education, since numbers really are the ultimate precision language.

maybe a bit OT but i find this interesting.

chinese speakers can memorize more numbers because they have easier words for their numbers, according to outliers an avg chinese 4y old know numbers about as well as a western 5y old.

imo wasting tons of time boring the children with ineffective system is a waste of talent. same with forcing them to learn to write/read 50 letters when 25 would do the same job is also a waste of time. better to teach them that(to conform with society) when they are better at memorization-learning later at life.

English is not a good language for this purpose.

Reason? Spelling.

fir
fur
fern

She wore a bow in her hair and took a bow on the bow of a boat with her beau while shooting a bow made from a bough.

First time I hear that.
I'm french, speak a bit of english (enough to read you), learned spanish and russian at school, learned ancient greek at university and had an initiation of arabian language.


In arabian, you have several way to say "one".

In english "you get up, down, out" or get whatever you want. In french you need 10 different words to say "get".

Just try to learn french conjugations or russian declensions and you'll agree with me : there is absolutly no doubt, english is far more easier than any of these language.

Taking french this semester.... its tough, much harder than spanish imo

The thread title and thread content seem to have a disconnect, but to answer the title: Yes.

I can think of many benefits of a unified language but I am hard pressed to come up with drawbacks.

It seems inevitable, anyway. I'm no expert on linguistics, but it seems to follow that when people speaking different languages form a community together they will end up speaking the same language. As the communication barriers go down, we are becoming one big community.

Yeah, this is already occurring. English is winning. Not necessarily because its the best language for universal adoption, but for other obvious reasons.

the cultural homogenization that is required to create the circumstances that would force learning a unified language on the world. i've taught english in korea, and many people have to have a certain level of fluency in it to advance in their careers, despite not having any need to use it.

fewer cultures to learn about FTW

I found some cool statistics
On a more political level,

exactly right. the following quote for my source backs up what u said.

Some nations strongly resist the acquisition of new words from other languages. This has been the case with the French government's response to the relentless invasion of English words in recent decades, especially in pop culture and technology. However, young people in most developed nations eagerly embrace new words regardless of attempts by their governments to retain "language purity."

I support universal language.
It's convenient and the precious time people waste on learning many different languages could be spend much more productive.
As to which language should be the top dog... I dont care really, I speak 5 languages and English is my worst (which is probably obvious from this post) but I wouldn't mind if english was to become the universal language of this planet.
It's easy to learn and sounds good in songs so why not heh.

i think we should ask the judeo-christian god what he thinks about it...

Great idea, op.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

I suggest Chinese. Most of the world is speaking it already anyway.

It's a logical, no-frills language. Few inconsistencies, few exceptions, and almost NO GRAMMAR.

Written Chinese is horribly inefficient however. It seems to take a lot longer to read ( no skimming seems possible ) and ofcourse it takes your WHOLE childhood to learn most of the common characters.

I don't know if it would be better per se, but it would sure make traveling to different parts of the world easier.

Language is very strongly tied to culture, and culture is not a bond easily loosened and broken.

not even close.

This seems like enough to disqualify it.

mildly related, i've read that korean script (hangul) is the best wiriting system around for a bunch of reasons relating to readability and simplicity

I'm learning Chinese in college and while the spoken language is VERY easy, the written aspect makes it very inaccessible to outsiders. Every word has a unique character which usually only vague clues as to the meaning or pronunciation of the word.

If Chinese people used a phonetic alphabet it would be a leading candidate for a global language but they're not gonna change, nor should they. Language isn't just there to communicate, it's an intrinsic part of culture and tradition and there are more important things in life than efficiency.

How the **** do they type chinese (or korean or japanese for that matter) on the keyboard? Seems absolutely impossible.

I'd also note that it is debatable if it is always the case that two people speaking English are speaking the same language.

Well obviously they are if we assume the above sentence to be syntactically correct, but consider that it might mean something else and it becomes an example of what I mean.