Comment by CrystalLangUser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CrystalLangUser | Hacker News Reader

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CrystalLangUser

This never will happen. People will never agree to upending their culture and language, even in supposed interests of humanity. [Whether this would actually work is arguable].

> You can preserve culture and language, while simultaneously forcing everyone to learn English.

Nope, because culture and language are deeply intertwined. Over time, people would use their native languages less and less, and then entire cultural swathes of knowledge will be lost.

Next, no one will ever agree on one language. Not English, not Chinese, nor any made up language. Especially not an existing real language, for any number of reasons.

There are also concepts in different languages that are difficult to translate or grasp in other languages. Translation isn't a 1:1 rote task.

> I think it's about time humanity decides to stop the ego trip and declare english as the earth official language.

There is no "ego trip" going on here. The only "ego trip" is assuming that we can simply force everyone, unilaterally, to speak X language.

> Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages. It's a waste of resources, and a hindrance to the most important challenges of humanity.

[Citation needed that this is better than forcing 1 language on humanity, which will almost certainly only happen with supreme military force, aka wars.]

> written chinese is way too complicated

Subjective.

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Translation is a problem that we have to deal with, but it's better than trying to force one language.. People and societies cannot be engineered with a hand-wavy solution of "oh, just 1 universal language".

This is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint of blithely trying to "engineer" life and humanity, as if it were so simple.

> This never will happen. People will never agree to upending their culture and language, even in supposed interests of humanity. [Whether this would actually work is arguable].

This worked for one country, so there are chances it works at a bigger scale.

However, I fail to see arguments that are serious enough to back up your "never", which is a pretty big word to avoid argumenting for somebody using "citation needed".

> Nope, because culture and language are deeply intertwined. Over time, people would use their native languages less and less, and then entire cultural swathes of knowledge will be lost.

That's not killing, that's letting die. Do you regret latin ? We are doing alright without it. But we can still read it if we need to.

The difference between killing and letting die is that people will stop using their languages after decades without feeling to be robbed of it, because they still could use it.

> Next, no one will ever agree on one language. Not English, not Chinese, nor any made up language. Especially not an existing real language, for any number of reasons.

Again with the huge, absolute assertions, without backup.

> There are also concepts in different languages that are difficult to translate or grasp in other languages. Translation isn't a 1:1 rote task.

Yes. Things are imperfect. We will loose in the process. Guess what is also imperfect ? Communicating at the scale of 7 billion people with different culture, believes and needs.

> There is no "ego trip" going on here. The only "ego trip" is assuming that we can simply force everyone, unilaterally, to speak X language.

Absolute sentences and lack of arguments are usually sourced in a strong emotional reactions more than logic. So my guess is there is some ego there.

>> Peace, democracy, exchange, cooperation, archiving, education: they are too hard to do in hundreds of languages. It's a waste of resources, and a hindrance to the most important challenges of humanity.

> [Citation needed that this is better than forcing 1 language on humanity, which will almost certainly only happen with supreme military force, aka wars.]

Well, take 5 people speaking 2 languages each, but only one in common with another one. And 5 speaking the same language. Put them in a room and make work on project. Check which team accomplish the fastest the task at end.

>> written chinese is way too complicated

> Subjective.

The fact it takes 5 years to a chinese to be able to write english and 10 for an english to learn chinese is not subjective. Again, that's funny comming from somebody who is all emotional about this.

And I get it. I get that languages are an emotionally charged topic. But incomprehension is a problem hard enough when we speak the same language: see this very thread.

> This is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint of blithely trying to "engineer" life and humanity, as if it were so simple.

I don't know where you got from me that it was simple. Also, thinking I'm talking about engineering and not politics and sociology "is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint".

What citations do you want me to provide? This is purely theoretical discussion. Do I need to cite that after millennia, we still have different languages?

Do I really to dig up some academic paper to acknowledge that humans find it hard to agree on standards? That doesn't even include the geopolitical implications of this- as if China would ever agree to make English the One Language that all government and business runs on, etc.

If you make a theoretical conjecture, I don't need to provide academical papers to provide a rebuttal. Please, treat academical papers with rigor, not as a fallback for when someone challenges you on, again, a theoretical conjecture. I also don't need to provide papers for basic human intercourse.

> This worked for one country, so there are chances it works at a bigger scale.

No, you cannot extrapolate based on one country. Human beings are irrational and proud. Again, look at it from a geopolitical view.

> Yes. Things are imperfect. We will loose in the process. Guess what is also imperfect ? Communicating at the scale of 7 billion people with different culture, believes and needs.

Yes, different cultures, beliefs, and needs. All of which would be lost by -unilaterally- forcing one language, since reaching agreement won't happen. Nations are still figuring out how to solve their own issues, so why should a Korean person care to be forced to learn some random language? That already happened when Japan occupied Korea and forced Koreans to learn Japanese- why don't you read some history and tell me exactly how much Koreans liked that. [This also goes back to my previous statement about military domination being the only real way of forcing a language change.]

> The fact it takes 5 years to a chinese to be able to write english and 10 for an english to learn chinese is not subjective.

[Citation needed again]. Of course English writing is easier to learn, it has a phonetic alphabet... However Chinese has much more simplified grammar than English. There is no subjectively "better" language, unless you specifically mean in 1 single aspect, maybe. But languages don't exist in vacuums, so this point is moot. (5/10 years is way off, also. This is anecdotal evidence as well, and years vary by each individual person.)

Discussing the merits of Chinese or any other language is really another discussion, but Chinese people do just fine.

> Again, that's funny comming from somebody who is all emotional about this.

No, this is coming from somebody responding to a shortsighted conjecture.

> Also, thinking I'm talking about engineering and not politics and sociology "is a very stereotypical hacker news viewpoint".

No, I don't think that you're talking about engineering. I'm specifically pointing out that you are treating a human and cultural issue from an engineering perspective, as if it's merely something that can be "fixed". It's a myopic viewpoint, because that's simply not how humans work.

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