response 1 of 35:

Jun 16 10:44 UTC 1999

no, it's bad bad very bad. On the one hand, I can see how it would be 
good to have a way to communicate with large numbers of people. On the 
other hand, language is an integral part of culture, identity and all 
sorts of useful things. Hearing one of my Gaelic teachers (alright, so 
he was extremely pissed) go on about the loss of his culture, and 
generally having studied a language that has been in massive decline 
for hunderds of years, it seems to me that there has to be a way of 
attempting to revive dying languages.

It may not necessarily be entirely useful, but then since when are 
things like Friends reruns, which people are willing to pay money to 
sustain, useful? The range of ideas and expressions that exist through 
different languages is amazing. You can learn all sorts of things about 
a state of mind when you learn a language. (a modest example) You can't 
say 'my house' in Gaelic in the same way you'd say 'my mother'. 'my 
house' is 'an taigh agam' which translates as 'the house at-me' but 'my 
mother' is 'mo mhathair'. Parts of the body, family, and friends, 
(altho not spouses) use the second construction. The more languages in 
existance, the more interesting larger languages become as well. Most 
of the people I know who have studied a language take small bits of the 
syntax into English. Which is much more interesting and therefore 
something to be kept.

response 3 of 35:

Jun 16 12:04 UTC 1999

The reason for our many languages is due to our past relative isolation.
In recent decades you can be anywhere on the planet within 24 hrs.  The
internet has tied landmasses together so you can visit any country in
a few seconds for only $19.95 a month.  A common language allows us to
communicate with one another without the services of a babble fish.  
There is little to be gained from learning a language no one speaks.  In
a way is is "bad" because it makes us a s a people less colorful but it
is also very good because it will allow us to communicate better with
one another.  Wouldn't it be cool to be able to talk with a Serb citizen
directly over the internet without having to learn Serbian first? Isn't
communication the key to negotiations during disputes and the threat of
war?  Right now we depend on our leaders to do this for us.  Wouldn't it
be better if all the people on both side of the argument could talk to
each other and not just hired muppets?  We have the technology.

response 5 of 35:

Jun 16 14:07 UTC 1999

Learning a different language gives you a peek into a another culture with
different values - values which may be a bettter fit mentally and emotionally.
Values and ways of seeing things that are much more satisfying.  Loosing these
chances to view life differently is a terrible loss.  I love my freedom to
go anywhere in this country and communicate and also have access to hugh
amounts of knowledge.  But I know no other language and many times feel
constrained by the limits of English - struggling to find words to express
feelings for which there seem to be no concepts let alone words.

response 7 of 35:

Jun 16 15:00 UTC 1999

De-languification is somewhat like de-speciation. Humans are homogenizing
the world, both intentionally and as a by-product of other activities.  We
know what lots of people want the world to speak just English, and lots of
people cultivate mono-cultural lawns. Other people think that diversity is
at least interesting, if not valuable, in both human cultures and
languages, and in ecosystems. If one thinks having a variety of animals
and plants in the world is worthwhile, why not also have a variety of
cultures and languages? 

Beyond diversity being interesting, there are practical (to humans) 
reasons for maintaining ecosystem variety, which is that the information
encoded in DNA of other species has contributed a great many benefits to
humans. Can one say the same thing about information encoded in different
languages. There are two sides to the latter - one aesthetic, and the
other manipulative. Certainly, the best way to find the maximum aesthetic
enjoyment of the language arts is in the language of its creation. A great
deal is lost in any translation. The same does not seem to be true for
manipulative information. It does not seem to matter very much whether an
industry is developed and conducted in Chinese or in English, for example.

A result of this would seem to be that, in constrasting the human desires
to maintain diversity in ecosystems and in languages, the former has all
the 'pratical' arguments in its favor, while the latter has only
aesthetics. 

response 9 of 35:

Jun 16 17:10 UTC 1999

        Although I'm not sure that the knee-jerk reaction some people have to
the death of cultural diversities is appropriate, diversity, ecologically,
tends to ensure survival.

response 11 of 35:

Jun 16 20:18 UTC 1999

I agree in principle that linguistic diversity is a wonderful thing, since
it's very interesting, and is an important part of a lot of cultures.  I
certainly don't think there would be anything to be gained by getting rid of
French or Spanish or something like that, which allow communication among very
large groups of people.  However, for somebody whose only language is one
spoken by less than 1000 people, I imagine telling them that their complete
inability to communicate with anybody in the rest of the world is necessary
to maintain linguistic diversity might not go over very well.

response 13 of 35:

Jun 17 17:45 UTC 1999

It just occurred to me that we can have a trade language, and lots of
*hobby* languages. The latter can be ethnic, or invented, like Esperanto,
or *re*invented (or recovered), like the native American languages. There
is nothing wrong with having any number of languages in use, so long as
everyone has a way to communicate with everyone else.

On the other hand, the fly in that ointment is that the interesting 
consequences of having to deal with other languages one does not know
would no longer exist. One seeks other means of communication, which is
both challenging and stimulating. One would not have the experience
(as I have had) of being invited into a Spanish farmer's home, and everyone
having a grand time exchanging the names for things in Spanish and English,
and building a memorable comradrie based upon unspoken languages. 

response 15 of 35:

Jun 17 23:57 UTC 1999

I was disappointed, living in The Netherlands, when I would speak to
(say) a shopkeeper in Dutch, and he would answer in Enlish. If there
were one universal language, we should be able to have Learner Plates
so that when we try "their" hobby language, we'd get answered in kind.

response 17 of 35:

Jun 18 12:26 UTC 1999

I took four semesters of German, but can now only speak it fluently if I'm
drunk and flirting. I'm sesquilingal.

response 19 of 35:

Jun 18 15:02 UTC 1999

We had a term for that in my German classes: "curve breaker".

response 21 of 35:

Jun 18 17:03 UTC 1999

I wonder to waht extent "every language is a different view on the human
condition". How do you know that if you don't know that other language?
Do you know two (or more) languages, Larry? If so, exactly what in
each constitutes "a different view on the human condition"? I speak English
and, at one time, both passable German and Dutch. I can not say that I
had different perspectives on the human condition at the times I spoke
one or the other of these languages. 

I did earlier make the observation that there is a resemblance between
DNA and languages, both being systems of information. But the system
of information of languages is much more mutable and, in fact, different
languages appear to be able to deal with the same "real" information
about external facts, with equal facility - that is, even a single
language can be used to work in many different views on the human
condition. 

Perhaps you are equating cultures and the languages that have developed
within each. To the extent that a language is a necessary part of a
culture, they are intertwined, but many aspects of cultures can exist
regardless of the language used. 

response 23 of 35:

Jun 19 17:25 UTC 1999

that's 'how the /english/ tried to stamp out the irish language', 
thankyou...:)  at the same time as they were trying to stamp out 
welsh...

but languages can come back from the dead, witness cornish, which was 
reconstructed by academics starting in the 70s, and is now widely taught 
in cornish schools, and use of which is growing encouragingly amongst 
pre-teens.

and i suspect polygon is right about there being /very/ few minority 
language speakers who aren't multilingual.  certainly, in southern 
africa it's extremely rare for anyone to speak only one language - oh, 
unless they're white... i wouldn't be surprised if there weren't more 
multilingual people in the world than monolingual, although i'm not sure 
how one would go about finding out.  out of two million or so welsh 
speakers (at a rough guess), which isn't exactly extreme minority as 
languages go, i'd be surprised if there were any left who weren't 
bilingual with english.  but take our language away from us, as the 
english tried very hard to do, and... well.  don't like even to imagine 
it.  as one of our writers said, a nation without a language is a nation 
without a heart.

/just/ aesthetics?  hmmmm.

oh, and there are some interesting educational research statistics which 
suggest that bilingual children are slightly behind in both languages 
aged about seven/eight, but by their teens are standard or above in 
both, and considerably more able at acquiring new languages... so maybe 
making the effort would be beneficial...

i'd loathe a world where everyone spoke the same language.  just as i'd 
loathe a world where everyone looked the same, or thought the same.