What is the language of the future

[Xenomit]

I've thought about this several times before, and I've even had a discussion about it with someone, and I wanna know what some of you think about this:

What is the most efficient language, and what language do you think is eventually gonna become the "human" language?

In all honesty, I have to say that would be english. Now, that's not because I already speak english, when I say the language of the future I mean the future, once we stop being fucking retarded and realize that if we wanna become space faring, we have to unify as a species. English is only hard to learn if you don't already speak it, and it would only take 2-3 generations to globalize it.

Also, think about this; What has the human language been in about 99% of all sci-fi? English.

I already know that a few of you are the "But what about preserving culture blah blah blah" idiots, and if that's you, don't even bother ruining this thread with your bullshit, leaving cultural and lingual borders up is the perfect way to slow down progress.

[24901miles]

And English-Chinese composite with borrows heavily from French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Korean.

[Thor]

Once I was reading about a hypothetical universal language that used single letters that represent concepts... Like, say, the letter 'a' represents the idea of fish, with more letters narrowing it down to more specific types of fish. say, 'ab' could mean freshwater fish, 'abc' meaning trout, 'abcd' rainbow trout, etc.

It's interesting concept but I'm not sure how it would work, especially spoken

[Sense-Offender]

...chicken sandwich?

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 09:55 PM, Thor wrote: It's interesting concept but I'm not sure how it would work, especially spoken

Really, the most efficient possible way to communicate is artificial telepathy; You can't read other people's minds, but other people can transfer entire thoughts and concepts to you in fractions of a second through use of a wireless computer directly implanted into the brain

[ohbombuh]

French.

Just kidding, it'll probably be Korean or Chinese. I expect English to be around in another 50-100 years, but I doubt it'll grow very much in popularity.

[Thor]

At 9/26/13 09:59 PM, Xenomit wrote: Really, the most efficient possible way to communicate is artificial telepathy; You can't read other people's minds, but other people can transfer entire thoughts and concepts to you in fractions of a second through use of a wireless computer directly implanted into the brain

That's intense

[24901miles]

At 9/26/13 10:00 PM, ohbombuh wrote: Just kidding, it'll probably be Korean or Chinese. I expect English to be around in another 50-100 years, but I doubt it'll grow very much in popularity.

I think the popularity of a language has a lot more to do with the amount of international trade that's happening through that language. Native English speakers aren't a huge group, but the amount of money being spent per speaker, with English as the language of trade, is astronomical.

At 9/26/13 09:53 PM, 24901miles wrote: And English-Chinese composite with borrows heavily from French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Korean.

An* which*

[Tankdown]

Majority English, but intermixed with many others.

[24901miles]

At 9/26/13 09:59 PM, Xenomit wrote: Really, the most efficient possible way to communicate is artificial telepathy; You can't read other people's minds, but other people can transfer entire thoughts and concepts to you in fractions of a second through use of a wireless computer directly implanted into the brain

Fuck right off. People already throw their half-formed thoughts out into the world without censoring themselves, and we don't even have "artificial telepathy".

If anything, we need machines which disable people from sharing their thoughts before they're complete.

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 10:03 PM, 24901miles wrote: I think the popularity of a language has a lot more to do with the amount of international trade that's happening through that language. Native English speakers aren't a huge group, but the amount of money being spent per speaker, with English as the language of trade, is astronomical.

English already kinda is global for the most part, tons of other nations require it for high school graduation, and businessmen/ politicians from all around the globe speak it fluently

It's the dominant language in Singapore, if I'm not mistaken

[Cynicalx]

Catalan

[Nor]

An advanced from of English maybe, but Im not sure.
It could be any language, hell it could be a language we havent even created yet.

[Nor]

At 9/26/13 10:11 PM, Nor wrote: An advanced from of English maybe, but Im not sure.
It could be any language, hell it could be a language we havent even created yet.

Form**

[Tankdown]

OMG OMG OMG

The language of the future will really be texting!

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 10:14 PM, horatius wrote: English is for plebs.

Care to explain why English is so inefficient? If anything, asian languages are faaar more complicated, as beautiful as they might be

[Little-Kinky]

Maybe, after quite a number of years, the most efficient language will just dominate. People will see less and less need to learn others, and learning other languages will just be a hobby, instead of a skill.

English?

[24901miles]

At 9/26/13 10:17 PM, Xenomit wrote: Care to explain why English is so inefficient?

Intonation and syllable duration don't matter. In Cantonese (and Mandarin, kinda), the spoken inflection changes the meaning of the English "word" equivalent drastically.

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 10:28 PM, horatius wrote: We American's tend to think the world revolves around us but it really doesn't. Most other countries would laugh at your idea.

America isn't the only English-dominant nation, it didn't even invent English.

It's not about the world revolving around America, it's the fact that America is what people think about when they imagine first world nations.

America invented the modern world, America shaped industry in every way. BUT, this isn't about America, this is about English.

Being complicated isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing.

That logic works for English too. It's complicated that similar words have different meanings, but that works to our advantage. Not to mention that alphabets descending from Latin are so insanely superior to other forms of communication.

[Manly-Chicken]

At 9/26/13 09:55 PM, Thor wrote: Once I was reading about a hypothetical universal language that used single letters that represent concepts... Like, say, the letter 'a' represents the idea of fish, with more letters narrowing it down to more specific types of fish. say, 'ab' could mean freshwater fish, 'abc' meaning trout, 'abcd' rainbow trout, etc.

It's interesting concept but I'm not sure how it would work, especially spoken

Isn't that just basically Chinese?

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[Chdonga]

I hope it'll be English. Or Japanese. I don't want to learn another language.

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 10:43 PM, Chdonga wrote: I hope it'll be English. Or Japanese. I don't want to learn another language.

May I reiterate that I'm talking about the distant future

[Chdonga]

At 9/26/13 10:45 PM, Xenomit wrote:

At 9/26/13 10:43 PM, Chdonga wrote: I hope it'll be English. Or Japanese. I don't want to learn another language.

May I reiterate that I'm talking about the distant future

I wouldn't want my distant ancestors to learn any language unless it is a derivative of Japanese or English.

[Xenomit]

At 9/26/13 11:09 PM, Chdonga wrote:

At 9/26/13 10:45 PM, Xenomit wrote:

At 9/26/13 10:43 PM, Chdonga wrote: I hope it'll be English. Or Japanese. I don't want to learn another language.

May I reiterate that I'm talking about the distant future

I wouldn't want my distant ancestors to learn any language unless it is a derivative of Japanese or English.

Why not japanenglish

[orangebomb]

Considering that English is for all intents and purposes, the universal language for global business and diplomacy, it would most likely be the language that would be spoken most in the future. Not really that surprising considering that the British Empire controlled a fifth of the world's population and a fourth of the land mass, which most likely meant that they taught their language throughout the world towards others. It also helps that America is the most powerful nation today, and is the most influential as well.

Will other languages be spoken? Yes.
Will they replace English as the universal language? No.

[Atlas]

English and Mandarin Chinese according to Firefly logic and fucking love me some Firefly.

[Painbringer]

Latin. Just like the good ol' days.

[exudaz]

There was a movement for a universal language awhile ago called Esperanto. It was phonetic, not too difficult for learners, but failed because people are just too ignorant. That could have been the language of the future.

Languages will continue to evolve like they have ever since they've existed. If you were to go back 2,000 years, English would be nothing like it is today. I'm not even sure if there was any type of English back then.

[24901miles]

At 9/26/13 11:34 PM, exudaz wrote: There was a movement for a universal language awhile ago called Esperanto. It was phonetic, not too difficult for learners, but failed because people are just too ignorant. That could have been the language of the future.

In hindsight, it was short-sighted. We've known for a few decades that computers would replace human translators as soon as it was viable. And you can't really expect 7 billion busy people to re-educate themselves just to speak a language that only a few reclusive nerds are speaking.

Have a look at this video.

I think we've hit the point where technology will change the way everything about the evolution of language. People who grew up speaking only one language will slowly learn new terms through cultural drift and the "internet of things", i.e., easy words and phrases in other spoken tongues gaining and losing popularity in a broader online culture. At the same time, cell phones will gain the ability to translate spoken words between people from different ethnic backgrounds, no matter what the language, making it easier to connect between cultures.

Then, it's just a matter of money and population to see what language survives.

[Xenomit]

At 9/27/13 12:00 AM, horatius wrote: I didn't say it did, but it adopted it.

This is about the English language, not America

How would you know that's what people think besides Americans?

Ask anyone in a 3rd world country

We're the only nation in the world with so much water that we have massive multi-million dollar parks dedicated to splashing around in it, we have fast food chains on every block of every city, we've been the center of the world economic system for decades

America is the first world nation

You're kind of proving my point of American arrogance. America may be superior in some form's, but your statement doesn't make any sense. Japan is way ahead in public education. They are also more advanced in certain technologies like robotics, not to mention architecture.

No, America literally invented the modern world. We invented modern infrastructure, those things you call skyscrapers, we invented and modernized elevators, we discovered how to fucking cultivate electricity (ok, break from the list for a second, that's all we really needed to invent, without it we'd still be in the 1800's) we invented television, mass production, radio, just about everything.

Like I've said twice now, America invented the modern world. Besides that, we spearhead the world economy, we have the largest and most powerful military in the world, and America influences the planet more than any other nation.

Now will you please stop fucking talking about America, this is about THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

This topic is about America because they use English as their language.

No, it's about ENGLISH, AND OTHER POSSIBLE GLOBAL LANGUAGES, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AMERICA

Their are a lot of culture's and countries you are neglecting. It's typical today's generation of western society.

FUCKS SAKE THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AMERICA