I Wish Everyone In The World Spoke The Same Language

[THUNDER HANDS]

I am so horrible trying to learn different languages.

That's one of the reasons I could probably never live anywhere else other than the U.S., Canada, Australia or Great Britan.

If everyone spoke the same language we'd probably have less war and be less fearful of eachother. We'd probably treat eachother with more respect.

I know different languages add culture and stuff, but I'd gladly give up a little bit of culture for a little bit more peace and understanding.

Now, I'm not saying everyone has to speak English, but if there was one accepted world language, I wouldn't be against that.

[no name no slogan]

1. Eh, we tried that with Esperanto

It went over like ham sandwiches at the Bar Mitzvah.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. Esperanto is doing quite well, thank you

And, irony of ironies, its creator was a devout Jew and a major scholar of Yiddish, Lazar Zamenhof, who probably never had a ham sandwich in his life! :)

Before the Internet, about 5-8 million people had at least a little knowlege of Esperanto -- they could identify if if they saw it, and they could translate it if they had a word list. Truly fluent Esperantists numbered around 500,000.

However, the Internet allowed a major expansion in the use of Esperanto. I haven't seen any statistics on it, but the number of fluent Esperantists has at least doubled in the last ten years. Music in Esperanto has become popular enough so that a few bands have had hits in the language (all in Europe, I'd hasten to add), and several indie films have appeared with Esperanto as their working language. (It's no longer just Incubus and Gattaca). Esperantists also formed some of the first international gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender activist groups, as well as SAT (Sennacia Asocio Tutmonda -- the World Non-Nationalist Association), an early activist group whose example would later "inform" groups such as Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International.

You can find out what's going on in the Esperanto world through www.esperanto.org -- there are thousands of websites in Esperanto and/or dedicated to Esperanto.

--p!

[cavanaghjam]

2. We would

if Americans would learn mathematics.

[ogradda]

3. i worry about what language is spoken in heaven

is it one we even speak hre today? an older one from long ago? or one that has undergone linguistic drift from long ago never even spoken here? maybe they have more than one. heaven must be a big place.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. the language of heaven

is the language of the heart. It is one that is said without words; thoughts are communicated directly. This has been my experience and the experiences of other mystics I have known, when we have had mystical experiences.

[ogradda]

14. i 'd thought about that too

i had wondered if it might be something like that. especially since we don't take our bodies with us. not sure how much physical manifestation is there.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. When I was a kid

My mom joked that everyone in the world really spoke English and that all the other languages were just a put-on in front of us. She said that if you woke people in China up in the middle of the night they'd speak English to you until they became more alert and start speaking their 'fake' language again. I dunno, I've been to a few other countries in adulthood and it looks like they are still putting on a pretty good act....

[ogradda]

5. teehee

mommy stories :)

[Aiptasia]

6. I like the diversity

but I also like the idea of a common business language, which may end up being mandarin chineese if we aren't careful.


I can speak some broken dutch, spanish and italian and know some japaneese catch phrases, but i've always found new languages fun!

[Gryffindor_Bookworm]

7. Are you B'ahai?

That's one of the tenets of their religion -- a universal auxiliary language. It's very cool.

[THUNDER HANDS]

8. nope

I'm a sorta half Jewish, half Catholic, mostly confused little boy. :D

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. They do

it is called the language of the heart. I have been in zhikar with sister/brother Sufis who don't speak English, and it wasn't needed to communicate the fellowship and unity we felt.

[HereSince1628]

10. Nonverbal communication is pretty standard

from culture to culture...

As an English speaker I find it conceptually difficult to deal with issues of conjugation and declension.

I thought learning to read parasitology in Russian was really hard but the Greek cognates stood out as much as do French and Latin in English, and with practice verb and noun endings do make sense.

Three years of high school latin were a good background for making sense out of reading in such foreign languages as BIOLOGY and ZOOLOGY

[CatWoman]

13. maybe we can hook you up with one of those

Star Trek Universal Translators :D

[ooglymoogly]

15. and gee how about we all wore

the same clothes that would take a lot of the difficulty out of life, what to wear and all. and what if we all watched the same program on tv and read the same book. no more difficulty with the thought process and all and what if we all marched to the same drummer. ah well... i think they are already doing that over at the repiglican party.

[gmoney]

16. Bablefishes for everyone!

A great literary device from Hitchhiker's Guide... a little fish you can slip into your ear allows you to understand all spoken languages. Have they discovered it yet?