The thought of a world language that could be spoken and understood in any country is quite a formidable subject of discussion. There are a few developed alternative languages but so few people speak them that it really isn’t worth mentioning them. Esperanto is the most widely used alternative language in the world although the majority speak it only as a hobby. Music can be considered to be a universal language to a certain extent. You can’t exactly give a lecture on quantum physics in D minor now can you. *chuckle*
Our world may be “shrinking” as far as communications between nations…but if you dropped 100 randomly picked Americans in a foreign country, say Germany, chances are, unless they can find people who are can and willing to speak English, they’ll be somewhat frantic. Not exactly a fair two-way street. Americans shouldn’t expect to go to foreign country and speak English with the locals. Even if the locals know English, it seems slightly disrespectful.
With Esperanto, the world would be a different place. Perhaps it would be better. Then again, maybe it isn’t a good idea after all. Sure people would be closer but it might lead to a lack of nationalism within various nations who take pride in their own languages. Here are some of the pros and cons to having Esperanto as a world-wide universal language.
-Pros-
1. The world would become more united in the sense that language barriers would cease to exist. This means that someone from Bolivia could converse with people from Russia and Sweden at once without the need of a translator, phrasebook, or need to learn two separate languages. More importantly, things would be less messy without the need to switch dialects every other sentence.
2. International business and trade would become faster. Foreign business men women would have an easier time making deals abroad and thus make foreign trade faster and more efficient.
3. The option of only having to learn a single language is open to future generations.
4. There will no longer be a need for people to spend large amounts of money on translators (human or computerized). They may save it to spend on other things.
5. People will no longer have to learn other languages to communicate with people in other parts of the world. The U.N. would no longer have the need to use the six standard languages during assemblies as well.
6. Music sung in Esperanto could be understood around the globe and thus a new branch of the music industry could be created.
-Cons-
1. Using a universal language may reduce the amount of national pride one holds for their country and native language.
2. A universal language could eventually become tiresome.
3. The use of a universal language could lead to a future of only having a single world language. A single world language could further lead to cultural disputes among the global community.
4. A universal language would remove the fun of learning different dialects.
5. Esperanto would take jobs away from translators, teachers, and manufacturers.
6. Books and newspapers would have to translated and printed in yet another language. That is somewhat costly.
7. If phased in to education, older generations will be left out for the most part.
So there are some of the pros and cons to having Esperanto as a universal language. There are obviously more positive and negative elements to the subject but I think I’ve listed some of the most important. The idea of universal world language never really had much support when it was laid to rest but presently…who knows. Would the world be more open to growing closer together through language or find it as an insult to national culture? Esperanto may just stay a hobby forever.
~Astroaction149
Read my other blogs at: http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/astroaction149
I don't think I've heard of Esperanto before. Is there a website or anything that has an Esperanto dictionary? It might be an interesting to look up everyday words and see what they are in Esperanto. I would assume that some culture-specific words would still exist, like sombreros are still sombreros and so forth.
~ *~
This is a signature, an automated thingy that pops up when I comment, not a demand to see my blog!
Mind Control is Easier Than You Think
There are a limited number of Esperanto resources available. There are a few dictionaries as out there I believe. Check wikipedia for more information. It's based on Germanic and Latin dialects.
~Astroaction149
Cool. I'll look this up later.
~ *~
This is a signature, an automated thingy that pops up when I comment, not a demand to see my blog!
Mind Control is Easier Than You Think
While I have heard of it, I don't know much about Esperanto. Now I want to look up more.
One way to improve this post is to put some paragraph breaks in the first part. It's a big block of text and breaking it up a bit makes it easier on the eyes. Otherwise, good blog.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
Already taken care of. Thanks. I personally don't like large blocks of text without breaks as well.
Esperanto is an interesting language. It happens to not only be most widely used aux. language, but also the most comprehensive in terms of vocabulary and consistency of grammar usage.
My husband started learning Esperanto a few years ago and I was intrigued but never really got into it. I wasn't and still am not sure that it would be a successful movement unless it had lots of worldwide support. I opted to learn Mandarin Chinese since I had millions of guaranteed speaking partners. Without lots of speakers, Esperanto will continue to be a hobby and a dinner party discussion topic.
www.progressiveu.org/blog/americangirlinchina
The whole issue was that it never had enough support when it was first created. Now days however, it might catch with more people if they knew about it. I'm not really surprised when I hear people say they've never heard of Esperanto. It isn't really referenced to in popular culture. I learned about it from a old British comedy made in the late 80s. The majority of people have no way of learning about it due to the lack of support and resources available.
On the pro side, you forgot to mention that now there would only be one set of instructions on how to build something like a shelf or a desk. Less papers to sift through!
Even if we did have a universal language, I don't think other languages would die out. I think people would still speak them and teach them to their children. But it would make things a lot easier. Can you imagine how hard it would be to convert to a world language? And who would teach us? We'd still have dialects though; I don't see how we couldn't.
Oh, did you know that you can translate the google homepage into a wide variety of languages? There's German, French, Chinese, Klingon, Esperanto, Bork Bork Bork, Spanish. There's a lot to choose from!
As far as instructions...thats just part of the whole picture. It isn't really a huge change. When I spoke about different dialects, I didn't directly mean to suggest that languages would die out if provided with a universal one. The idea of a universal language made me think of Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. Putting that aside.I think there would probably be a percentage of the world population that wouldn't bother to teach their children native dialects if they could get by one just one. Not everyone of course but it does present that negative possibility.
On the Google note...yes. I found that a while back. It's quite amusing.
But how could lack of national pride possibly be a bad thing? The issue of national pride is the only thing clouding the world today. For example, it is being used by oil corporations as an excuse to wage a war in order to increase profits.
The conceivers of this language, honorable as their intentions may be, are forgetting one thing: we as humans started out with a universal language in the first place. As we expanded and moved, the language became dialects and the dialects became different languages and everything stemmed off until nobody could understand the next man.
This alienation is the result of isolation. Sure, we are connected by the Internet. But who is we? We are the people of the MDCs, the more developed countries. The Internet develops at an exponential rate. Could Haiti possibly keep up with this? By the world adapting to one language, we could be furthering the distance between these exploited people and the developing countries in which they live, and "us", the modern people of the human world.
I believe that national pride is good thing, in moderation. The clouding you speak of is certainly an issue when too much pride exists among various nations. This makes me think of the sports banner that hangs in my high school gymnasium. It reads, "Be a fan, not a fanatic." The same goes for national pride. One should be able to enjoy and appreciate their country without going overboard.
Keeping nations separate through language is not always a bad thing. It gives people a national identity. If for no other reason, we should have different languages for the sake of having something interesting to learn and understand. A single language would become boring even though it would be the fastest way to bring the world closer together.
Countries such as Haiti would have an easier time working within the global community. With an understanding of a widely used language, other than Creole, it gives people that much more of a chance to get a better education should they want to make their home somewhere else in the world. They would be able to take classes in other countries to educate themselves further or perhaps other countries could establish institutes of learning there. There are many possibilities.
The world economy of today is not based on morals. There is a limited amount of money, and everyone wants as large of a chunk as possible. Who will help out the Haitian people beyond donating a few grains of rice to clear their own consciences? I'm not going to pull up any statistics, but I'm betting most of these people don't even have means of getting off the island which they were born on. It's a disconnected wasteland. Even if Esperanto was open to everyone, the Haitians wouldn't hear about it for years-and then, they wouldn't obtain the textbooks until someone else was finished using theirs, by which time there would be a revised and updated version of the language.
Perhaps I just like to take the optimistic stance on the possible effects of universal languages helping third-world countries. Perhaps one day the U.N. will find a way to pull Haiti out of poverty and let them join the global community as more than a wasteland with uneducated inhabitants. Helping Haiti would be much easier to do financially if we weren't involved with Iraq anymore.
Epseranto may not be for everyone nor would it introduced into education anytime soon if it were decided to be a good idea. Despite this, one must remember that no idea, no matter how good, can go anywhere without those to back it and see it through.
~Astroaction149
I looked at the useful Esperanto phrases at the Wikipedia site and they were woefully lacking.
I speak enough Spanish to get by fairly well but I have traveled to Mexico with non-Spanish speakers and it has been my experience that the two most useful phrases beyound (yes, no, please, and thankyou) are:
Dos mas cervezas! - Two more beers!
Donde esta el bano (sanitario)? - Where is the bathroom?
A language that does not put these things front and center is in my opinion worthless. lol
But seriously, the world already has an international language. It is called English. It is the language of diplomacy, the language of international trade and finance and perhaps most importantly it is the language of education and science.
If a non-English speaking person was going to learn a second language, does it make sense for them to learn a language that not a single significant population uses as a native tongue or a language that gives you access to 98% of the world's knowledge and which is spoken to one degree or another in every country in the world? Personally, if I was a Chinese or German or Indian or Arab or any other non-English speaker who wanted to get ahead in the world, I would invest my study time in learning English rather than Esperanto.
...I feel that you are looking that this in a very close-minded manner. The Wikipedia page for Esperanto is just an example of it. I recently came into possession of an Esperanto dictionary / phrasebook and it is full of useful phrases. Can't find a good Esperanto phrase? Make one up then. There are plenty of words to use. Almost every English word, if not all of them, have an Esperanto translation. The grammar is much simpler to grasp than English and some other languages as well. Words sound, with only a few exceptions, as they are spelled. English is full of confusing rules and exceptions as are many languages.
English may be the "language of diplomacy" but it isn't understood everywhere in the world. A single universal language would not only be a more neutral alternative to English, but it would also confuse non-native speakers a bit less to use a language such as Esperanto which would put all speakers on the same page.
Esperanto may not be as popular as English but that is partly because it never received enough global support. I'm not trying to say having Esperanto or any other aux. dialect as a universal world-wide language is the best idea...but I'm certainly not going to say it's a bad idea either.
Read my other blogs at: http://progressiveu.ord/blog/astroaction149
You might be interested in the world languages survey (however at this time it's only offered in 9 leading languages).
So far Esperanto is winning the poll by about 1000, that number is expected to change to an even larger margin, but I guess that depends on how many people participate.
http://www.publicstudies.com/lang_survey/
Thanks!
~Webgovernor (IDO/Esperanto/Lojban/Interlingua Speaker)
(Esperanto and IDO are my favorites. And Lojban is kinda fun).