If everyone had to learn a international language...

[Gee337]

I took part in an English debate competition where we had a similiar topic - whether it would be a good idea to make teaching English compulsory because of its status as a "world language". We had to do some research of our own both in support, and against the statement, and we got to hear a lot of interesting facts from other teams as well.
If "learning an international language" would be compulsory, it would definitely be English, since it is the current lingua franca. What I found interesting is the effects of a language being so widespread, both on English and other languages. Even though it is impossible for everyone to perfectly learn English, exactly because of it being so widely used we end up with a lot of people "butchering" English, because of various reasons. The most prominent example would be the internet, where your and you're, or their/they're/there seem to mean the same to many. (And I'm not being a grammar nazi.)
Even more interesting to me is the effect of English on other languages, especially "corrupted" English words, which we can see in Japanese. I found it fascinating how some words integrated into Japanese, to the point where some of them don't even sound like English words at all. On the other hand there are those cases where a word is borrowed in English, but only its meaning changes. You can find a lot of examples for this in Europe, like Handy in German meaning mobile phone, or here in Hungary "diszkont" (A butchered pronunciation of "discount") refers to the shop itself.
English seems to be "overpowering" (maybe that's not the right word) some other languages. My German teacher (from Germany) expressed his worries that nowadays young Germans tend to use a lot of English words even though there is an equivalent in their own language. I also find myself using a lot of English words mixed up in Hungarian, for example the word "skill" - I just somehow feel that it's better than the Hungarian translation, and most people I interact with do know what it means.

I would love to see what would happen if a new "compulsory world language" was introduced. It would be chaotic, for sure.

 

[alecgraham]

I also find myself using a lot of English words mixed up in Hungarian, for example the word "skill"

How do you write "skill" in Magyar?
Does anyone in nearby countries study Hungarian, or is it kind of like the Netherlands in that foreigners don't study your home language so the native population tends to know several languages?

 

[Gee337]

How do you write "skill" in Magyar?
Does anyone in nearby countries study Hungarian, or is it kind of like the Netherlands in that foreigners don't study your home language so the native population tends to know several languages?

There is no exact translation, hence my problem. The closest term would be "ke'pesse'g" (a mirror translation would be something like 'being able to do something'-ness), which means ability. There's also "ke'pzettse'g" ('being trained in something'-ness), and "ke'szse'g", which is more like the talent/potential to obtain a skill. These are all words created by adding a suffix to adjectives, and somehow feel a bit strange/different to me. Maybe it's just my own problem, but some of my friends do agree with me.
Many people speak Hungarian in the neighbouring countries, but that's because they themselves are Hungarians. (Post-WWI borders didn't really follow ethnic borders around here.) Since the language is quite hard, both grammar and pronunciation, I believe only those who plan long-term here, or have some kind of personal reason learn the language. Still, we're not as "advanced" as the Dutch in that aspect, but most people from my age group speak at least one foreign language, usually English or German.
edit: seems like the forum doesn't like É

 

[alecgraham]

Many thanks for the reply! I am half Hungarian, hence my curiosity. My great-grandparents come from a village near the border of Hungary and Romania. When they came to the States, they knew upwards of nine languages (but knew no English, lol). I wasn't sure if Hungarians living outside Hungary's borders still spoke that language or if enough generations had come and gone that maybe only the domestic language (ie Romanian in Romania) was spoken, but from your post it sounds like it's alive and well even beyond the official borders.

 

[BrianLewis]

I have been extremely impressed with the Korean language since the reform back in 1600. I think it's one of the most efficient and beautiful languages out there. However, I have never made an attempt to study any language used in China. If I were to pick a language based on characters, Japanese would be at the bottom of my list; the writing system is far too fumbled and confused.

 

[AquaLung]

Espanol. I would already have a head start as I took some classes in high school, and there's a lot of Spanish speaking people where I live. And work with as well. It is almost a second language in California. Maybe not officially, but in terms of population.

 

[Yukiko chan]

I think an international language, whose main function would be to ease communication among people around the world, should not be chosen on the basis of emotion or taste or any criteria that is irrelevant to the goal of making communication among different cultures easier.. although so far the lingua franca of communication in any given region has always been the one with the most cultural and economic influence.. but if we had the choice, I think such a language would have to fulfill the following criteria at least:

1/ It must be easy to learn: having a very simple grammar, easy spelling (identical to pronunciation), and an efficient word construction system..
2/ It must use the most common writing system(s): in our case, Latin alphabet..
3/ It must express ideas as concisely as possible..
4/ It must be accurate enough not to cause frequent confusions or misunderstandings, but not necessarily too accurate..

English seems to satisfy the last three quite well I think.. but it seems to me that Esperanto is even better..

 

[nahadef]

2/ It must use the most common writing system(s): in our case, Latin alphabet..

Chinese is the best for that. People speaking different languages can read it without knowing the pronunciation. It's remarkable. Imagine you could read any language in the world without knowing how the author would speak it! It would be amazing. Chinese characters are the way to go, and if the country of China can keep itself rising, it could eventually get there. I'll be dead, so I won't mind not being able to follow along.

 

[Yukiko chan]

Chinese is the best for that. People speaking different languages can read it without knowing the pronunciation. It's remarkable. Imagine you could read any language in the world without knowing how the author would speak it! It would be amazing. Chinese characters are the way to go, and if the country of China can keep itself rising, it could eventually get there. I'll be dead, so I won't mind not being able to follow along.

Chinese characters are not the most common, but yeah, they have that advantage! But on the other hand they take a lot more time to memorize.. maybe in the future we'd have brain-computer interfaces that would allow us to memorize large amounts of information very quickly so that wouldn't be a disadvantage anymore.. and if that happens we may even think of having a language for each function or field, like a very logical and accurate language for philosophy and science (and maybe for politics too, so that politicians cannot deceive people), a language optimized for beauty and harmony for the use of poets, etc.

 

[nahadef]

Chinese characters are not the most common, but yeah, they have that advantage! But on the other hand they take a lot more time to memorize.. maybe in the future we'd have brain-computer interfaces that would allow us to memorize large amounts of information very quickly so that wouldn't be a disadvantage anymore.. and if that happens we may even think of having a language for each function or field, like a very logical and accurate language for philosophy and science (and maybe for politics too, so that politicians cannot deceive people), a language optimized for beauty and harmony for the use of poets, etc.

It's not so difficult... if done from childhood. For adults, it's pretty painful.

There is an advantage of Roman letters, in that they are easy to use. One reason I think Asians are more likely to travel in the West than Westerners in the East is that Asians can look up words they don't know, but Westerners just give up immediately when they see characters.

If characters were casually introduced into Western education, within a generation, the fluency in world communication would drastically improve. They really are better for imparting meaning than phonetics. I'm not quite fluent in Japanese, but I'm surprised at what I can get by simply knowing the kanji.

 

[alecgraham]

Chinese is the best for that. People speaking different languages can read it without knowing the pronunciation. It's remarkable. Imagine you could read any language in the world without knowing how the author would speak it! It would be amazing. Chinese characters are the way to go, and if the country of China can keep itself rising, it could eventually get there. I'll be dead, so I won't mind not being able to follow along.

As much as I love Chinese, I think it would be incredibly impractical for most people. Often, Chinese characters contain elements that are phonetic clues, but these are often linked to ancient pronunciations and not modern Chinese. These clues would be useless for most spoken languages, as they often are with Japanese which, as everyone here knows, was a spoken-only language before being grafted onto kanji.

If you really wanted to go the true pictographic route instead of something like Esperanto, why not start from scratch and just have little icons that really look like mountains, dogs, clouds, etc.? After all, screens are replacing pen and paper. Verbs and adjectives might get trickier, and for truly abstract ideas I suppose a hanzi or kanji would do as well as anything else. You could type in your native language and see the icons pop up on the screen.