I was thinking

[masha]

Sometimes I'm just thinking....

Why don't we ALL speak and write one language.

First it's easy to communicate with those persons. But also we can send our old school/university books to Africa, and many other poor countries.

Again, was just thinking:)

Sleep well,

Love Masha

[Unregistered]

well, that would make for a pretty boring world Masha. your heart is in the right place but for better or worse, we are not homogeneous. we come from such varied climatic and social extremes, we can't help but have different customs, cultures and languages. although sometimes I feel just like you do, perhaps that is exactly how it is meant to be. in that, despite our differences, we still need to communicate and help one another.

[gadfly]

I had the same thought. People put so much emphasis on the idea that language preserves a group of people's cultural heritage. In fact, it works like trade barriers, preserving the ability of underskilled people in rich countries to retain their jobs while limiting opportunities for skilled workers in poorer countries. I think that first, we could get rid of all of the silly languages that people speak for purely nationalistic reasons. Estonian is a fucking useless language, along with Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian. All of the Native American languages like Apache are useless, along with tribal languages like Evenki and Chuvash. Any language that people don't really publish books in is pointless. I would learn a universal language - it doesn't even have to be English! Grammatically, Turkish is the most advanced language; it was developed in the 1920's by Ataturk to replace Arabic. Cuneiform and other earlier non-phonetic languages were invented so that people would need scribes to communicate, thus creating a pre-biblical nomenklatura. Later, vernacular languages replaced the universal language, latin, because European kings wished to consolidate their nation-states. Even later, nationalist movements lead to the revival of needless languages like Hungarian and Czech, and the establishment of regional dialects such as Ukrainian as bona fide languages.

[zulu]

nice point Dear,

actually i am glad there are many languages, cuz they are a part of the culture and aren't we all a little proud of our culture? The language is a medium to communicate and they all have their own peculiarities that others don't have, such as how words are pronounced when someone wants to verbalize the feelings while he/she is happy, mad or in love (just an example). The languages are a part that makes cultures and its people so different and interesting at the same time!
I think, the more languages you can really understand and speak the more you understand all humans and cultures.

But obviously there must be one language for all humans in the future to get along in a globalized world.

However, there are other easy ways to help the 3rd world, too.

see ya...
zulu