The Language Barrier (Thursday, June 9, 2011)

          Diversity in general is always advertised as good, it depicts originality! However, there is a darker side to the story of diversity which is rarely analyzed. In the case of the world's languages it has been deeply rooting a setback since the beginning of language diversity that is documented. Today there is an estimate of 6, 909 known living languages (Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed., 2009; http://bit.ly/mxJkd5), and somewhere around 39.5k alternative languages/dialects. This alarming number of world languages hasn't only resulted in the hindering of communications in a regional geographic scale, but of course in the global scale as a whole.

In the near future the languages of the world will have to merge back into original languages (i.e. Latin, Greek) simply because we just can't effectively communicate fast enough across the board. Diversity is not always great; it's just holding the world back from coming together in this case. If everyone in the world would be on the "same page," government bodies, organizations, etc., the world's economy itself would be at a much safer level, not to forget mentioning technology and any important research program. Originality has its dues, and some are not desirable.

There might be a singular language to derive from Portuguese, Spanish (including subgroups; Catalán, Gállego, etc.), French, Italian, and Romanian (all Latin rooted languages) to compose an international language that represents that subgroup of world languages. In this case I would not favor Latin because it's too old and too rough for even Latin cultures to revisit this language. Although, a form of Spanish mixed with Italian I would think, might work and sound very good; merging the differences in word spellings and pronunciations into easy forms to represent both, and easy enough for the other Latin languages to easily understand the verbs and copy them. Also, there could be a form of English that can represent German, and all German-based languages from Scandinavia and all other European countries. English itself is a German rooted language of course. We can't afford to live as disparate kingdoms each with its own language like in the early feudal systems anymore.

Uniting the world is very important to overcome world economic struggles. Although, we have to make sure not to establish a world dictatorship, and neither a one single overseeing language, but rather everyone cooperating to benefit everyone, with a globally standardized small group of languages.