Langues

Essay: Should we have one global language?

(250words are not enough in my opinion for a task as this one, because it becomes quickly and easily an open debate with no real answer but a few options that would probably be almost impossible to implement in our nowadays society because of the exponential growth of the population on the last decades, actually after the end of World War II; so I will summarize and make a truncation of the ideas that would have developed but I will exceed by far the objective of the 250words I apologize)

Nowadays, they are around 7000 languages still spoken in the world, but linguists believe that in one hundred’s year time more than half of them will be extinct (currently endangered). There is no doubt that 7000 active languages do not help the worldwide communication between different populations (as long as they just learn their mother tongue which is the case for a part of the human population). So one global language will definitely help the global communication. However, the incitement of learning an individual language, world widely spoken (learned to start with); will with no doubt destroy the existence of more than half of the currently spoken languages, by encouraging the jettison of less spoken languages.

Firstly, one global language will definitely help communication “Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone” (William Albert Allard), so in a way if we look back in to the past, between 1.3millions and 50.000 years ago the same process took place, the humankind began speaking with words and not only with movements because of the evolution (tools, etc).So why not again, we could say that in a way we can do the same but to improve the communication with everyone on earth.

But personally, I think of the cultural aspect mainly. In my opinion the language is a factor in maintaining the traditions of each country/region/city/village. So the language unifies in a way that a few things could and implementing a unique language would destroy the bounds between populations and would summarize the humankind with one poker face culture with no real identity. Furthermore, the beauty of diversity is perfectly represented by all the existing languages, but the corrosion of our culture is also gently represented; for example in Nigeria, 8 languages are extinct and 515 are still spoken so gradually languages disappear, at the end will they still have a language proper to the country or will it be English or even Chinese or a new universal language?                                                           The biggest problem is the way languages are represented, when less than a quarter of all languages in the world are used in education and in the cyber space we understand the issue. The real issue is not the wish to communicate better but the fact that only a quarter of the languages are used on the Internet and only 60 of them are well-represented on the web.

To summarize, we cover the alarming fact that our historical and cultural wealth are dying, global language would help the communication between populations and so trading, maybe economy, surely politics, ect… but a unique language would kill our historical and cultural wealth (wish is actually happening now with the globalization and wish is an alarming fact); but the real issue of our dying treasures is the way that they are represented on the Internet wish is the beating heart of knowledge and so of the possible survival of our cultural wealth, of course with exhaustive help of the “developed countries”.

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