Spoken language is a wonderfully complex mystery. Human’s can’t seem to live without it, yet the majority of us cannot speak to each other with 100% accuracy. Even within a language and even within a dialect, people are so lazy and sloppy with their words that misunderstandings are more the rule than the exception.

Developing a universal language is a great idea. Of course, the only thing that makes a language universal is when everyone uses it. Here are the most-used languages in the world today:

1. Mandarin 1,120,000,000
2. English 510,000,000
3. Hindi 490,000,000
4. Spanish 425,000,000
5. Arabic 255,000,000
6. Russian 254,000,000
7. Portuguese 218,000,000
8. Bengali 215,000,000
9. Malay/Indonesian 175,000,000
10. French 130,000,000
11. Japanese 127,000,000
12. German 123,000,000

Logic dictates that Mandarin is the best candidate for Earth’s universal language. It is already spoken by the most people, and I predict that China will own more than 50% of the world within 20 years. Our future (current?) landlords and employers may require us to speak Mandarin very soon now.

However, as Scrud Kelley points out in his New World Order Scam blog, the unified “One World” concept is just plain insane. A human population of any size needs diversity and its inherent conflicts to keep things, well, human.

A universal language will never exist. Esperanto is a clever and well-intentioned attempt, but it will never replace English for commerce, French for culture, Latin for tradition, Spanish for romance, or Italian for cuisine.

And while at least 100,000 people speak Esperanto fluently worldwide, it is often reported than even more people speak Klingon.

Maybe we could do without all the different world languages. I wouldn’t mind losing German, which sounds like someone clearing phlegm from their throat, or the many slavic dialects that sound like the baby talk so many dog owners use to schmooze their pups. We could do without any language that requires clicking or whistling. And spare us any attempt to base a new language on math or binary code, no matter how logical it sounds!

No, let us keep mumbling nonsense to each other as we misunderstand our way through life. It’s only human.

Six-Eye Jackson

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