SoulPancake

I think that a universal language is absolutely unnecessary! Spending time in other cultures, I realized how beautiful their language was. However, aside from the sheer beauty of various other languages out there, there is a major cultural aspect to each language. Without that language, I think that a major part of that culture dies. Certain ideas can only be expressed in that language. I know that in learning Italian, I have often felt as though certain things I'm thinking or would like to say just aren't possibly expressed in Italian. However, I realize that is because that is part of our culture. It is something completely different in their culture, and in trying to force my English thoughts and sayings into a rough translation of Italian, I am in a way defacing both languages AND cultures. The Italian towns I have spent time in that primarily speak English massively lack that sense of culture that I have found in the smaller towns and less-Americanized bigger cities. Language is a strong aspect of culture, and without it, the unique, rich cultures of our world will suffer and die out--leaving us completely shallow and ignorant.

just like a lot of things, this came from sin. when Babel was built, we all got our respective languages. had those of the past not worried about reaching up to heaven by a tower, and just shut up and done what they were told (we all really should) we all would have (a) no language school classes and (b) an easy way to understand eachother

newspeak.
1984.

I don't think a universal language is necessary or desirable. I think the variety of languages is an important part of the varied cultures and how they express their ideas. Also, if there were a universal language why should it be English? English is an extremely complicated language.

Esperanto suffers from a few fallacies, some of which which I would like to list here.

A common fallacy is that because Esperanto was invented, it is not organic. It was artificial 120 years ago, but was soon released to the public, free to evolve and grow at the whims of its speakers. Through continuous us in every imaginable situation by a world-spanning community, it matured into the complete, living, organic natural language it is today.

Another common fallacy is that if Esperanto is indeed a living, organic natural language, it has fractured or will soon fracture into dialects, or has acquired or will soon acquire all the messiness of other living languages, losing any advantages it may have had in the process. In actual fact, Esperanto has proven very resistant to dialectization and increased complexity. Its vocation as an internationally used second language and its inherently elegant simplicity have helped ensure that; innovations either fit easily into the existing framework, spread quickly and are adopted by the entire community world-wide, or they do not, and fizzle and die just as quickly. Esperanto is just as easy to learn and just as universally understood by the entire Esperanto community as it always

Yet another common fallacy is that "Esperanto, universal language" = "Esperanto, only language". Esperanto is meant to be an easy-to-learn common bridging language, with everyone keeping his or her native language and regional language (if different from the native language). No loss of other languages.

Esperanto is small (about 2,000,000 speakers), but it is growing, and faster than the world's population. If it continues the way it has, it could eventually reach a critical mass where it just takes off.

A universal language is highly desirable -- and inevitable -- and I think it will be an organic language and not an invented one. In my view, English by far shows the most promise for becoming this organic universal language. This is the case for several reasons. British colonization of America, Australia, Canada, India, and Africa gave the language a huge geopolitical base from which to grow.

The emergence of the United States, in turn, as the business powerhouse of the 20th century ensured that English would become the language of international business. This is in evidence in China, Japan, Europe, and Latin America.

Add to that the phenomenon of global media, driven largely, for better or for worse, by American cultural exports, and you have the makings of the world’s first universal auxiliary language. English is not, by a longshot, the most widely spoken first language in the world today, a distinction that belongs to the Mandarin of the populous Chinese. The three most widely spoken languages on Earth today are:
1. Mandarin: 873 million native + 178 million secondary = 1.051 billion
2. Spanish: 400 million native + 100 million secondary = 500 million, and
3. English: 380 million native + 720 million secondary = 1.1 billion.

The telling number in all of this is the final number, which shows that, when native English speakers and speakers of English as a second language are added together, it tops the list. And perhaps most significantly, that far more people speak English as a second language than any other.
But if English indeed does become the global language, don’t look for it after several generations of ongoing global cross-pollination to be identical to current English. Rather, I believe that what we will see is an extension of what we already have: an organically changing version of English that constantly is being infused with words from other cultures that convey more specific meanings and subtle cultural origins. Long before globalization, English was a melting-pot language, incorporating Germanic Anglo-Saxon dialects, French, and Latin, and in more recent centuries adding useful terms from cultures around the world. Perhaps a language that already has such a long history of mutations and assimilations is our best chance at a first universal language.

@SayItRight The sharing of ideas is extremely important, and there's no denying it is hindered by the language barrier. It's also accurate that words with out an exact translation could be summed up well enough in many cases, although the spirit of the word can be lost.

Our launguage affects our thought process greatly. The diversity of thought that generated individual languages remains in the thought process of its speakers. Consider the differences beween Eastern and Weastern Logic, which although subtle and now greatly eroded, created significant cultural differences.

On a utilitarian level, the sacrfice of these differences would be minimal compared to the gains of a universal language. A universal language wouldn't by any means lead to homogenous thought. But ideally the sacrifice wouldn't have to be made and we could preserve the ideas that could potentially stem from this diversity.

I definitely think that it would be easier if we all spoke the same language, but isn't a little bit arrogant for Americans to think it should be english? I also don't think it would work. Around where I live, it seems that I encounter more people who CAN'T speak english than people who can. I will readily admit that I find this annoying and frustrating, especially when there is a great number of people who can't speak the language native to my country. If I went to Spain, I'd learn spanish; France--French. It's just polite I guess.

That being said, I think a universal language would be a great thing in a step to achieving peace.

@Hayley

The language border hugely hinders the spreading of knowledge and information. The concept of words that are not easily translated is not a good thing, it just makes the language barrier even harder to get by.
Besides, many words that can't be replaced by one in another language could probably be summed up in several different words. That would be a trivial inconvenience when compared to how great it would be if the world could share ideas more fluently. (You should laugh at my use of the word 'fluently' because it is a pun.) The sharing of ideas has proven to have fantastic outcomes; just look at the Renaissance era.

Here's a fun fact: Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google all have Esperanto as a language preference.