Should English be THE universal language?

Answer 1

No, nor should it be Esperanto because that's too European-centred. I think that instead, a language should be based around Arabic loanwords in other languages, but with simplified pronunciation and grammar. This would remove the bias towards European languages which would put off a lot of people from learning, and place English speakers at a disadvantage, which would be a good thing.

The language should put verbs at the end of sentences, subjects at the beginning and objects in the middle, because this would then dictate all the rest of the word order and make it easier for speakers of other languages which do this such as Hindi, Turkish and Japanese, all of which are widely spoken. It should avoid consonant clusters and generally alternate vowels and consonants with neither consonant clusters nor diphthongs in order to make it easier to pronounce for speakers of a very wide variety of languages. The sounds r and l should be interchangeable and there should be only three vowels: a, i and u. It should be written in the Latin alphabet. There should be no articles, gender, conjugation, declension, copulative verb or means of expressing alienable possession. Aspect, tense and mood should be expressed by invariable particles. Tone should not be a lexical item, except for the single interrogative particle at the end of a question, which should have a rising intonation.

Any word similar in form for the majority of speakers of languages originating outside both Europe and China should be adopted into the vocabulary. There should be no vocabulary or grammatical structure which allows prejudice, so for example the translation of "beef" and "cow's flesh" should be the same, the word for clitoris should be "female X" and penis "male X", and there should be no gendered words except for the words for gender themselves. Swearwords should be purely that and not have extra meaning. The verb expressing "making love" should only be meaningful with a plural subject and be in the middle voice only.

There should be regular decisions for new words and rules of grammar by consensus decision making bodies selected at random from the world's population.

Such a language would be easy for everyone to learn and change their way of thinking to make them more peaceful and caring, by removing all notions of possession or sexism, and by encouraging new universal ways of seeing the world which were fairer.

Answer 2

Should? Actually English IS the universal language.

Answer 3

ANY "universal" language would last about 1 day before dialect differences started to arise. Given a little more time and all those dialect differences would become different languages. That's just the way things work with language.

There WAS a universal language once about 100-150 thousand years ago in Africa in the first community of genetically modern humans. It lasted until half the community moved across the river.

And if there were one universal language, I'd be out of a job :(

Answer 4

English is already the language of commerce and industry. If you work for a global corporation it won't matter whether you're speaking to someone in London or Tokyo, they'll still speak English.

This does not mean it should be the only language. Diversity of language is something to be cherished in this world, and ancient languages die out every year because the newest generations speak a different tongue.

Answer 5

If there is a universal language English is it already - whether it should be or not.
The British colonised just about everywhere and when our power wanned, the Americans took over, so English has been the language of power for about 300 years.
It'll change one day I expect
Madarin chinese may be spoken by more people, but not my more nationalities.

Answer 6

No, I think this would do a lot more harm than good. This would likely cause the official languages of other countries to lose their importance. I think that if people from the U.S., U.K., or any other country want to communicate with people from other countries they should at least make the effort to learn the basics of their language. Think about it, if I want to communicate with a person from Japan why should I require him/her to communicate with me in English? Seems a bit unfair (and I say this as a native speaker of English mind you).
It wouldn't do our world any harm to learn a bit about the languages and cultures of the others who inhabit this earth with us.

Answer 7

it is the universal language

Answer 8

The universal SECOND language, yes. It's fast becoming that as we type. About one person in five on Earth can already speak it to varying degrees.

Answer 9

People who are calling for mandarin chinese are forgetting the language is mostly spoken in China. The people who speak it are largely poor and non-influencial. If there were to be a universal language, it should be something easier like interlingua.

Answer 10

No.

If any language were to be universal, it would be Mandarin Chinese - which is spoken by more people in the world than any other.

English comes in a distant second.

FYI: English is the common language of international commerce worldwide. NOT the official language - just the COMMON language...which makes doing business on a global scale much easier.....