I'm not sure if you are joking, but language is highly political. You could say that language is the root of cultural, and thus national and ethnic, identity.
Language domination tends to follow political, trade, and economic domination. The "lingua franca" of Europe used to be, as the phrase implies, French. Before that was bastard Latin, after that it was German. More people speak Spanish than English in the New World, and Brazillian is a close third.
The problem with suggesting a default language is that you are also implying worldwide domination. It's not usually a welcome idea. :)
There is a joke about that: air traffic control frequencies are shared, for obvious reasons. Once a Lufthansa flight was coming into Berlin. The pilot asked for clearance in German. The tower responded that he must use English, as that is the rule. The pilot responded: "Why? I am a German, flying a German plane to a German airport. Why must I speak English?" Another pilot cut in-- "because you lost the bloody war!"
This is actually true; if you don't trust the pilots of a former enemy, a good way to keep tabs on them is to make them use your language on the radio. QED.
I very much doubt he's joking. It's actually subtly insulting that you think he is. Marilyn vos Savant, for one, agrees with that idea. Not that she has any credentials other than being smart, but there's really no better credential than that for weighing in on this topic, as it's not a matter of expertise but one's assumptions about what's important. Like her, I favor the gradual unforced adoption of a single global language, and English seems the best bet at this point. I think what we lose in diversity we more than gain in standardization.
Perhaps more controversially, I happen to think English is objectively the best[1] natural language currently available for this role. It's got by far the biggest vocabulary and is by implication the most expressive. Ayn Rand's native language was Russian, she was fluent in several other languages, and she wrote that English gave her the most freedom and power of expression.
[1] Assuming we can agree that a concept such as "best" can exist and we don't degenerate into nihilistic pseudo-philosophical examinations of first principles.
Well, that wasn't what I intended. I am truly unsure the original intent.
English is pretty good, I agree, though phrasal verbs are the work of the devil. It has a head start in aviation, mathematics, engineering, some television, finance, and computer science. The British did a good job of seeding it everywhere and WWII gave it a large boost. Then again, the dissolution of the empires in the 60s made English and French less fashionable in many areas of the world as nationalism took hold.
Favoring "gradual unforced adoption" is a fine thing. I suppose I favor it too, as a "lingua franca" but not as a single global language. Knowledge of history does, I'm sorry to disagree with you here, qualify one to have a credentialed opinion. Language hegemony has never happened without a lot of people getting killed. I do not favor that, and I trust you don't either. Maybe this time will be different, who knows? America has always had wonderful, astonishing optimism.
But keep in mind that what you are proposing is no less than closing the book on many venerable, vibrant, and (ahem) more populous cultures. They will push back as much as you would push back on being told that English was obsolete.
I never said how or when it should happen. Just that it should. (Would be great if it happens peacefully and gradually and with some effort to not hurt other folks feelings.) I also never said I think English is the "best". I only think it's the path of least resistance. Of all the languages that are serious candidates, most reasonable people would agree it's already the closest thing we have to a global standard language, especially in science, business and programming. Also, you can have and preserve culture even when a people's default language changes. I also would argue that there is nothing inherently special in "culture" which is distinct from it's component elements -- much of it is random and arbitrary and due to different choices and evolutionary paths caused by geographic, racial and tribal/breeding differences. I'd argue that much of what we now consider to be national culture will blur together and fade away over a long enough period of time. And the pace has likely accelerated due to modern travel and communication technology (eg. jet airliners and the Internet). I also think it would be a net-win eventually if all nations merged together into a single nation -- among other things, it would eliminate or at least drastically reduce the need or justification for large standing armies and the military-industrial complex. US wouldn't need to make another country a boogeyman (USSR/China/Iraq/Iran/etc.) and vice versa. What would have become a military/espionage situation in a multi-nation world become perhaps at most a legislative or law enforcement action.
Fair enough. I hope that everyone learns English too. But I also hope that if it does happen, it does not happen at gunpoint or to the exclusion of other languages, cultures, literary and oral legacies. That is what happened when Old English was merged at swordpoint with Norman French to produce the language we're using now.
I happen to disagree that "culture" is a null word or that it can be translated fully. Virtually all multilingual people I know think the same way. It's ok to disagree with, but not dismiss, that opinion.
Where one stands depends largely on where one sits. Would you be willing to give up English --completely, not even teaching it to your children-- for Spanish or Chinese?
"there is nothing inherently special in "culture" which is distinct from it's component elements"
I disagree, there are expressions that correspond to modes of thought that get legitimacy/relevance from their connection to the history and identity of your people. The expressions "blood, sweat and tears" or "keep calm and carry on" does not and can not mean the same thing in mandarin, if you never use them in english anymore you will have lost a connection to that particular historic/cultural experience.
>I very much doubt he's joking. It's actually subtly insulting that you think he is.
I also doubt that he's joking, but it is not insulting to assume so. The suggestion that "the world should all switch to English as the default standard language" is rather naive and, to many people, downright offensive. Assuming that the suggestion is a joke is actually being generous.
Clearly, my point is that the aforementioned suggestion is not a well reasoned statement.
Suppose I post a comment on HN like "hey, maybe we should physically segregate blacks and hispanics and whites; there will be a few problems on the way but surely the crime rate between races will go down". I'd expect that comment to be regarded either sarcastic or downright trollish. It would not be insulting to consider it as a joke.
(Of course, this example is an exaggeration to make my point clear. I don't mean the original comment is trollish.)
I moved to Austria and I'm learning German, a putatively quasi-Romance language (shares a lot with Latin) that has a tiny fraction of the number of words that English has.
Yes, it's alternatingly irritating and hilarious to find how many animals we know by special names are called some variation of Cat or Bear, and I like to tell this as a joke, topping it off with the Katzenbär, which is both (Catbear). (A katzenbär is a red panda, in case you're wondering.)
But, at the same time, there is a lot of expressiveness in German that has no English equivalent. For example: schadenfreude. This is just one word of hundreds that are special, emotion-capturing words that have no real equivalent in English.
To argue that English is more expressive based on volume is silly.
"there is a lot of expressiveness in German that has no English equivalent", true for german and for many other languages (no need to mention asian ones where this is obvious).
The word "Zeitgeits" comes to mind too.
And considering this, allyagg, i'm not convinced by your argument about vocabulary size, i've always felt the english vocabulary as quite compact (and thus more convenient to use compared to other more complex languages)...
EDIT: allyagg, a bit of googling proved you right :)
From what i understand, english vocabulary seems more rich of "technical" terms while some other areas are less developed (i would say related to philosophy/poetry concepts for ger and ita for example ), rendering some words in other languages not directly translatable.
Language domination tends to follow political, trade, and economic domination. The "lingua franca" of Europe used to be, as the phrase implies, French. Before that was bastard Latin, after that it was German. More people speak Spanish than English in the New World, and Brazillian is a close third.
The problem with suggesting a default language is that you are also implying worldwide domination. It's not usually a welcome idea. :)
There is a joke about that: air traffic control frequencies are shared, for obvious reasons. Once a Lufthansa flight was coming into Berlin. The pilot asked for clearance in German. The tower responded that he must use English, as that is the rule. The pilot responded: "Why? I am a German, flying a German plane to a German airport. Why must I speak English?" Another pilot cut in-- "because you lost the bloody war!"
This is actually true; if you don't trust the pilots of a former enemy, a good way to keep tabs on them is to make them use your language on the radio. QED.