Is it reasonable and desirable to try and preserve all existing languages? Having only one language is useful?

Answer 1

not so very long ago huge numbers of people in southern and central europe spoke latin.

but as the people in spain began to get more interested in talking to each other than in talking to italians, their language slowly evolved from latin to spanish.

the same thing happened in france, italy, romania.

it is impossible to preserve a language against the wish of its speakers: people use a language to communicate with the people they want to talk to.

it is just as impossible to stop new languages from evolving. a thousand years ago there was no recognisable english language, but as the need for one developed it appeared.

there are already dialects of english which are nearly unintelligible to speakers of the standard dialect (jamaicans and nigerians have forms of english which are on the verge of becoming separate languages).

you cannot tell a language what to do:- it tells you.

Answer 2

Yes - if we also spoke one language , communication should in theory be easier. However, have you ever tried talking to a politician - even in his native tongue!!
Is it worth keeping languages such as Gaelic (Irish) where less than 5% of the population can speak it?
Well, yes, from the point of view of ancient documents & heritage I suppose.
English is fast becoming the world language regardless of how we might feel about it. I don't know what was wrong with Latin, a nice melodic language, beautiful words, like Tempus Fugit. Did Latin fade away like the Romans themselves . I think somehow that English will still be here long after the ethnic English are gone.
Yes, we should preserve languages for prosterity but speak English. Having said that , the more languages you know, the more people you can speak to & that's no bad thing!
Just avoid the politicians!!!!!!

Answer 3

Of course. Just because English is the widest spread language, and of course having one international language would help people communicate better, that doesn't mean that people will want to let go of their own history. Look at the UK and the Euro... how many people want to wave goodbye to the pound?

There's a theory kicking about that human evolution is based more on social effect than on actual biological change, and the effective improvement of society requires small communities teaching and improvign themselves. There are fears that modern life, with international phone calls and the internet, has reduced the world to one tiny community, where the sharing of ideas becomes so diluted that there is little scope for the human race to improve.

Local language is just a small part of keeping with these smaller communities. I guess there's some truth in this when you look at most internet forums and find people who just live to tell everyone else they're wrong, given the anonimity of the medium they think they can get away with anything.

Answer 4

Yes to preserve ones own language is essential and using a universal language for the mass.

Answer 5

However it is difficult for a language to develop if it's the only one. New words can be made up of course, but a lot of the time they are taken from other languages, either directly or as mistranslations. But surely Mandarin labels plants and animals in Latin, doesn't it?

Answer 6

We never can have just one language. That is quite obvious from the fact that my version of a language is always going to be correct and that whenever you deviate from my version I'm going to want to object to your incorrect use of language. Take the English language and the American language, which veer in their own alarmingly different directions as they develop. Where there are different peoples in the world, with their differing personalities, cultures and accents, there are going to be different local usages even of a common linguistic base.

Besides, who gets to choose which will be the lingua franca of the world? I don't think I could begin to cope with Chinese, for a start!

Answer 7

One language might be useful - but we would need to abandon English and all speak Mandarin. Now stop grumbling and get on with your French homework.

Answer 8

Yes, everyone should speak Welsh.

Who's going to choose the 'right' language?

Answer 9

I have just spent a year studying Greek, so it would be a pain in the a*se if I done that for nothing, keep different lingo's.

Answer 10

Someone somewhere wayback tried introducing Esperanto ? It never caught on I wonder why.