i learned it in the airport waiting for my plane. it's extremely simple. it was designed, rather than evolved into being, unlike the phoenecian or chinese alphabets.

I understand that language is somewhat tied to culture and tradition, but can you actually quantify the loss if a culture was to change languages?

I don't mean the effort/cost to learn the new language and switch everything over, but just in exactly what way would the culture be worse off once they have adopted the new language versus the old one?

The ability to read old untranslated texts and artifacts? What else?

Does anyone doubt that a change to a global language is inevitable?

Well, there was a time when a change towards Greek and Latin was inevitable. All it takes is some centuries of isolation and you're back to where you started. "Oh that will never happen" isn't really a solid argument, and it has certainly happened before.

As for English, 1 out of 5 in the world knows it...*edit* Mandarin is about the same but somewhat higher. In Europe more people know German than English (and we should really remove the French from the list, as most of them get deadly insulted if you speak English to them)...it is certainly spreading however, but it isn't as common as many people think (I remember reading that Americans tend to estimate that 50% of all people speak English).

That's an interesting point. In fact, Latin is not a different language from Greek. But, Ancient greek evolved. In the latin area, it became the latin language (imo, "nothing IS, but everything BECOMES" or "panta rei" in old greek).
Exactly like species, a new language doesn't appear in one day, it's always the same words but they evolve in different way (I know Darwin is not "legal" in every US state, but, I hope it's not the case in this forum .

Just an exemple :
Night (English)
Nuit (French)
Nacht (German)
Noche (spanish, Italian)
Nux, Nuctos (ancient greek)
Nox, noctem (Latin)

Every european language comes from "indo-européen" (sorry, I don't find a translation) language, spoken thousands of years ago (like Sanskrit).

Imo, it's already the case with english nowadays. I guess more people in the world speak an european language (english, spanish, french or other) than people who speak Mandarin in China (China is very big country with very different cultures).

But does it mean, English will keep being ONE language ? (In my english dictionnary, there are specific English terms and sepecufic US terms for example. I suppose it's the same in Australia, India and others english speaking countries).

And, another question for OP : Don't you think that more languages means more cultures and, by the way, a more intersting humanity ?

A friend of mine studied Japanese and the Japanese writing system originates from the Chinese. He told me the reason the Chinese writing system uses so many symbols instead of a phonetic alphabet was to have one written language for Cantonese, Mandarin and the other Chinese dialects. These dialects will use different words but the same symbol. Therefore speakers of different dialects were able to easily read each other's texts. For that purpose Chinese writing was very efficient (no need to lean the other dialects) and made eg. trading or administrating a unified China much easier.

A phonetic alphabet is the nuts.

50 percent of people in the world might not speak english, but 50 percent of those worth meeting do.

Language >> Culture? I'm sure it has some effect. But I also don't think a huge % of the population cares about other cultures; imo, they'd rather be able to communicate clearly. Humanity would still be very interesting. It seems like a waste of time and memory to learn multiple languages.

I get a sense that it's different from the ancient times since we have computers, and we are more connected than ever. You can't really say it was inevitable for the Greeks because they didn't know the Americas existed and we have explored the entire world. We generally know which languages exist and how they're changing. I think it's much different. And the internet may disappear once we run out of fossil fuels, hence isolating us once again, but ... I'm assuming we continue to get more and more connected. Please attack this assumption if it's terrible.

Weird because of my stats on page 1:
-- In 2001, 40/189 nations in the U.N. selected French as their language of choice for communication with other embassies. This came 2nd way behind English and German wasn't in the top 3.
However, Mandarin wasn't on the list either and hella people speak it.

I think that it would make the world better. The more people that speak the same language the less chance of misunderstandings.

I think English would be the best for everybody because it is so versitile and also its the international business language.

A young child can very easily learn two languages. Maybe even more. So we don't even get rid off all but one language. For example let's say English is not the one language everybody speaks, do we really want to lose Shakespeare? There will be other languages with other great writers that will be a shame to lose.
I think the advantages would still outweigh the negatives but maybe there is a middle ground.

human brains are not like hard drives with small amounts of finite memory. the more you learn, the higher your capacity to learn, and the more your mind is able to cope with new situations. what you're saying is like saying exercise is a waste of energy, when it actually gives you more energy.

I hadn't thought of that... good point.

My theory is that some things occupy the front of our memory and others occupy the back. When we learn new facts, other things get "pushed to the back of our minds." It's not that they totally exit our brains. Evidence of this is that when we re-learn a fact we say "oh yeah, I remember learning that" or "oh, it was on the tip of my tongue." This doesn't mean our memory is finite, but language is something that would consistently be at the front of the memory. I'm wondering if you think this is a good theory about our brains' capacities for memory?

Does the benefit of learning a second language and "increasing your capacity learn" exceed the loss detailed in my theory?

it's not a filing cabinet. you might only have one thing on your mind at a time, but your brain benefits to exposure to new ideas and, in the case of language, the vocabulary and architecture of grammar.

The problem is not how you "waste memory" on it, the problem is how you waste hundreds and thousands of hours on learning it. Hundreds and thousands of hours that you could be doing something else with.

Kids can learn it very easily but as we know most parents suck...

Of course there's a middle ground - everyone learning two languages: their native language, and English. Has most of the benefits of both sides with little extra cost.

Kids should somehow be made learn English. A foreign language is one of the few things that kids can actually learn (it's not like they're going to grasp physics or economy, even if they can memorise a ton of facts about it), so there's really no loss.

like watching cartoons? kids really aren't that pressed for time.
adults shouldn't be forced to learn new languages, since it's really inefficient and forced learning is generally a bad idea, but exposing younger kids to languages is better than a lot of the junk that they waste their time on.

As I said in the next few paragharps of my post, lol.

Loss of identity, obviously. And yes, it's probably impossible to quantify (as is just about everything that makes up culture), but that doesn't mean the loss isn't real.

If everyone in America was named John Smith and wore the exact same clothes, you couldn't very easily quantify the loss to individual personality, either. And being named John Smith or something else doesn't have any real physical consequences. But the loss could be felt by people.

I guess the part I can't come around to is that language is crucial to identifying yourself and your culture like your history and traditions would be. I still imagine a world where Javier the Spaniard, Bruno the Italian and Teddy the Russian still have their unique cultures and identities even if they learn a common language. Now it will just be easier to share their cultures with others.

Stuff like literature, turns of phrase and greetings aren't easily translated. Without these sort of things cultures and traditions die out fast and become homogenised ****e.

maybe now with the internet this will become possible, but language has a way of becoming localised and turning into its own language. this is true even on the internet.

for example on a lot of forums the term for someone annoying regular posters is trolling. on some gaming forums this is called raging, on here its called levelling.

No wai. Ur kidding.

"You can have it in any color, as long as it's black."

Really. No thanks. Part of the awesomeness that comes with being human is being multilingual.

There are only a handful of languages used in global commerce, English being one of them.

English wouldn't exist in the first place or be the vibrant language it is without the help of other languages.

IMO 90% people will be speaking same language soon (2100 ), but i think these 90% people will be speaking 2 languages at least. Should be interesting if anyone can provide data of how many people were speaking 2+ languages 100 years ago and how many now.

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You're being very optimistic about the future of mankind.