I doubt it, I think there will be a dominant language, and probably a large consolidation of languages, likely arround the current the current writing systems, and I feel it will be a loss to the world, but I am wiling to hear push back on that.
I dunno the thought just came to me. Or a better description is it rose to the surface. I know that we have the ability to translate written articles and comments decently enough in the the big languages, which will get better. But how will we speak to each other, or how will we be able translate through a picture, or how do we know these translators are in the right hands (what if they get so advanced, they can lie to you about what the other language is saying? Now normal this would be easily disproven, but libs are too sinophobic to second guess)
I think under a world socialist system, humanity could build a synthetic global language. I’ve heard that there is a international phenetic alphabet, though I don’t know too much about or how “international” it is.
The international phonetic alphabet is mostly used as a transcription tool for phonetic notation. It’s not really used for communication purposes but more for representing sounds made at the various positions considered possible by the human mouth, to varying degrees of specificity (you can be more or less specific with it depending on what you are using IPA for). Most of the characters it uses are based in latin script but its purpose is mainly to make phonetic notations rather than be used for general writing purposes, generally each language benefits from having a writing system that suits its own particular qualities and using the IPA to write would not be very practical.
As for constructed languages, I think there is a lot of resistance to them among people in general at the moment, for a multitude of reasons, but I think they are an underexplored field that could benefit people some day. At the very least they are interesting to create, study, and speak. I do think natural languages are going to continue to be predominant for the foreseeable future and constructed languages will probably remain in the realm of idealists and niche hobbyists for a long time.
Oh thanks for the details. I am sorta getting into conlangs, and I think the future potential of them could be incredible (either as a communication tactic to avoid surveillance or as I said a global human language. And honestly just to nerd out about .)
I think there will be a lot of local languages, with large regions (united by broad economic/political interests) each having a single lingua franca – say German or French or Russian or Mandarin. That was the model within the Soviet Union. Local languages were protected, and you went to school and conversed in the language of your particular ethnicity. But everybody also learned Russian, so that people from the various republics could communicate with each other. Liberals call this “cultural imperialism,” but really, it was just practical. In many regions of the Soviet Union, such as the Caucasus, you had a stunning variety of local languages, each of them highly complex and developed; for economic reasons, there had to be a single language everybody understood. To have this be Russian, the language most widely spoken in the USSR, simply made sense, and moreover – because a utilitarian argument could be made for it – was the closest thing to a politically neutral decision.
I feel like English, French, and Mandarin are already international standards. I doubt there will ever be one singular. Isn’t that the reason they invented Esperanto anyway?
Well yeah there are international standards already (thanks colonialism). But I guess I’m imagining a distant future where in a communist world, you could travel anywhere and talk to anyone under the international tongue (International is probably meaningless, at that point nations have probably disolved). Not familiar with Esperanto, but is that all latin languages combined? Will look into it. You know what you could also in a communist society teach people fluency in big languages, but isn’t with our brains you’ll always favor one?
Yeah, imperial languages reign. It’s interesting that older empires such as Spain and Arabia have had their languages splinter into 100s of dialects, some almost unintelligible to a native speaker of the original dialect.
I think what might happen in a unified world is something similar to India, where each ethnicity has their own language, regions have their own language, and then the whole country has the common language of Hindi.
but isn’t with our brains you’ll always favor one?
I think it’s context dependant like in India. It’s really just more practical. Language being about communicating ideas, it makes sense that the same ideas would be expressed differently in different contexts. Sometimes even friend groups have their own language, or even a set of twin siblings.
To use one language for everything would be very cumbersome. Imagine writing a low level hardware driver in Visual Basic 😉
Edit: it might even make sense to go in the other direction. Like for example law should have it’s own language, with it’s own words and sentence structure. Trying to cram it into English for example has clearly been a failure. And a few jargon words stolen from latin aren’t nearly enough. Biology is a little better with their custom grammar and pseudo Greek word construction, but even that would be helped by a whole cloth new language.
You know you are probably right with whole, independent languages, there’s only so many combinations of words your alphabet has set out, and it can get confusing.
Wait law has its own jargon? Okay I know it has stuff like prosecutor and stuff like that, but is that complicated it should have its own language? Wow.
Now I think about my brain does explode whenever the debate kids in my school talk so there’s that.
I getcha. In the distant future, do you think there will be a universal language?
I doubt it, I think there will be a dominant language, and probably a large consolidation of languages, likely arround the current the current writing systems, and I feel it will be a loss to the world, but I am wiling to hear push back on that.
I dunno the thought just came to me. Or a better description is it rose to the surface. I know that we have the ability to translate written articles and comments decently enough in the the big languages, which will get better. But how will we speak to each other, or how will we be able translate through a picture, or how do we know these translators are in the right hands (what if they get so advanced, they can lie to you about what the other language is saying? Now normal this would be easily disproven, but libs are too sinophobic to second guess)
I think under a world socialist system, humanity could build a synthetic global language. I’ve heard that there is a international phenetic alphabet, though I don’t know too much about or how “international” it is.
The international phonetic alphabet is mostly used as a transcription tool for phonetic notation. It’s not really used for communication purposes but more for representing sounds made at the various positions considered possible by the human mouth, to varying degrees of specificity (you can be more or less specific with it depending on what you are using IPA for). Most of the characters it uses are based in latin script but its purpose is mainly to make phonetic notations rather than be used for general writing purposes, generally each language benefits from having a writing system that suits its own particular qualities and using the IPA to write would not be very practical.
As for constructed languages, I think there is a lot of resistance to them among people in general at the moment, for a multitude of reasons, but I think they are an underexplored field that could benefit people some day. At the very least they are interesting to create, study, and speak. I do think natural languages are going to continue to be predominant for the foreseeable future and constructed languages will probably remain in the realm of idealists and niche hobbyists for a long time.
Oh thanks for the details. I am sorta getting into conlangs, and I think the future potential of them could be incredible (either as a communication tactic to avoid surveillance or as I said a global human language. And honestly just to nerd out about .)
I think there will be a lot of local languages, with large regions (united by broad economic/political interests) each having a single lingua franca – say German or French or Russian or Mandarin. That was the model within the Soviet Union. Local languages were protected, and you went to school and conversed in the language of your particular ethnicity. But everybody also learned Russian, so that people from the various republics could communicate with each other. Liberals call this “cultural imperialism,” but really, it was just practical. In many regions of the Soviet Union, such as the Caucasus, you had a stunning variety of local languages, each of them highly complex and developed; for economic reasons, there had to be a single language everybody understood. To have this be Russian, the language most widely spoken in the USSR, simply made sense, and moreover – because a utilitarian argument could be made for it – was the closest thing to a politically neutral decision.
I feel like English, French, and Mandarin are already international standards. I doubt there will ever be one singular. Isn’t that the reason they invented Esperanto anyway?
Well yeah there are international standards already (thanks colonialism). But I guess I’m imagining a distant future where in a communist world, you could travel anywhere and talk to anyone under the international tongue (International is probably meaningless, at that point nations have probably disolved). Not familiar with Esperanto, but is that all latin languages combined? Will look into it. You know what you could also in a communist society teach people fluency in big languages, but isn’t with our brains you’ll always favor one?
Yeah, imperial languages reign. It’s interesting that older empires such as Spain and Arabia have had their languages splinter into 100s of dialects, some almost unintelligible to a native speaker of the original dialect.
I think what might happen in a unified world is something similar to India, where each ethnicity has their own language, regions have their own language, and then the whole country has the common language of Hindi.
I think it’s context dependant like in India. It’s really just more practical. Language being about communicating ideas, it makes sense that the same ideas would be expressed differently in different contexts. Sometimes even friend groups have their own language, or even a set of twin siblings.
To use one language for everything would be very cumbersome. Imagine writing a low level hardware driver in Visual Basic 😉
Edit: it might even make sense to go in the other direction. Like for example law should have it’s own language, with it’s own words and sentence structure. Trying to cram it into English for example has clearly been a failure. And a few jargon words stolen from latin aren’t nearly enough. Biology is a little better with their custom grammar and pseudo Greek word construction, but even that would be helped by a whole cloth new language.
You know you are probably right with whole, independent languages, there’s only so many combinations of words your alphabet has set out, and it can get confusing.
Wait law has its own jargon? Okay I know it has stuff like prosecutor and stuff like that, but is that complicated it should have its own language? Wow.
Now I think about my brain does explode whenever the debate kids in my school talk so there’s that.