If there was an international language, what would it be?

I have no choice but to nominate English. As far as I know, most major non-English countries teach/require several years of English as part of public schooling. Is that a safe notion?
I'm guessing alot of that is due to the prominence of America, but also to the British Empire. That's where it started, at least!

Does music count?

There was effort with Esperanto, but it reveals not to be practical as English language.
Also, there was trial with French language as official language of European Union. But, I think that also failed. French is much harder to learn.

And that's in my opinion, the must important thing why English language dominates. Easy grammar, melodical language, almost all significant music and movies are on English,... That's why non-english countries adopted it easily.

Mandarin dominates apparently, with spanish coming in second:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

Plazma Inferno!:
English.. Melodic? Get off the pot. English sounds almost as canine as German. It is the most impure language that has ever existed.

Personally, I'd prefer to see Portuguese as the international language.

I'd like it to be Latin, but as now it seems to be English.
Hummm, me writing this in English is a point in favour of English too.

Oh, btw, I'm studying Spanish now too.

Hindi is a fairly scientifically complicated language. Where I think it might even have a larger vocabulary than most others, especially english. I'm spending an eternity learning it.

If there was an international language, what would it be?

I have no choice but to nominate English. As far as I know, most major non-English countries teach/require several years of English as part of public schooling. Is that a safe notion?
I'm guessing alot of that is due to the prominence of America, but also to the British Empire. That's where it started, at least!

Does music count?

Esperanto?

But yeah music does count.

I wote Orcish!

Lat buub! Kasta tak bagronk ishi!

English is the international language of commerce.

English is the international language of commerce.

and science.

We can't change it, it has become

The accuracy and impartiality of that Wikipedia list is disputed, it says to right at the top of the page. The top ten list in the Washington Post in 2002, for ranks in 1998, is significantly different:

Mandarin.... 874,000,000
Hindi.......... 366,000,000
English....... 341,000,000
Spanish...... 322,000,000
Bengali........ 207,000,000
Arabic......... 201,000,000
Portuguese.. 176,000,000
Russian....... 167,000,000
Japanese..... 125,000,000
German....... 100,000,000

"Language follows the coin, not the flag," is an old proverb among linguists. America is the economic giant today so English is the world's leading language. We should remind ourselves that French had its day in the West, as did Latin and Greek. Aramaic was the leading language in the Middle East for centuries, and we can hardly forget that Chinese monks spread their language throughout East Asia with their writing system and other culture.

Perhaps Chinese will have another period of ascendancy. Personally I think it's a much more suitable language for a rapidly changing world. It is far more adaptable than English, which is hobbled by Stone Age paradigms like tense, number, and parts of speech. We have to express relationships with a clumsy set of less than two dozen prepositions; Chinese does it with nouns and verbs.

Americans complain about the "difficult" phonetics of Chinese, but most of the foreigners I've met think that English phonetics are positively daunting. Chinese has the unique advantage, due to its near total lack of noise-words, of being compact. It generally takes fewer syllables in Chinese to express an idea than in most other languages. As a result it can be spoken more slowly, a boon for non-native speakers struggling to parse sentences in real time.

My vote, if it were up for election, would be Chinese. My prediction, based on the direction of the world economy, is also Chinese. Of course I'd be happy if it were Esperanto because I already speak it, but to me its intractable disadvantage is far too many syllables.

And that's in my opinion, the must important thing why English language dominates. Easy grammar, melodical language, almost all significant music and movies are on English,... That's why non-english countries adopted it easily.

English is actually one of the hardest languages to learn. The grammar has so many exceptions and is a jumble of other languages, mostly germanic and french. And there are many other languages that are far more melodic.

The only reason it is so widely used is because of the ongoing major influence of english speaking countries on other countries. The English Empire spread their language far and wide, and the American pseudo-empire is keeping it alive.

English is also the international language for aviation and the shipping industry.

and science.

I'm not sure u could call science a language. Perhaps Mathematics

Klingon

Klingon? You mean the Universal Translator.

Come to think of it, telepathy.

English is actually one of the hardest languages to learn.
wrong.
english is one of the easiest languages to become functionally fluent with.

that is..unless you are saying that 4/5ths of the english speaking world isnt "fluent".

i know turks that speak english better than the average american, without being highly educated.

wrong. english is one of the easiest languages to become functionally fluent with."Functionally fluent" is good enough to run a dry goods store as long as you're "intellectually fluent" in your native language. But "functionally fluent" is not good enough to make a meaningful contribution to a culture.

English is easy to learn as a pidgin because the macro-grammar is simple. But the micro-grammar--our gigantic glossary of idioms that make up a huge part of our speech--rivals that of Chinese, which has a special counting word that only applies to large flat objects and another just for books. You can run a software help desk in pidgin but you can't make a meaningful contribution to a culture. (And even that is difficult because if you assume that all words containing "tern" are accented on that syllable and prononce "internet" that way I think you're saying "internal" and your desk is not very helpful.)that is..unless you are saying that 4/5ths of the english speaking world isnt "fluent".I'm not sure what you're referring to as the "English-speaking world." The Washington Post's chart ten years ago counted it at 341,000,000, which pretty much adds up to the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and the smaller anglophone countries. If you toss in all those Indians who speak it better than a good many Americans you've got about 400 million today.i know turks that speak english better than the average american, without being highly educated.It has a lot to do with the accident of how similar the structure of your own language is to English. At the much larger other end of the scale, I know many, many Chinese with university degrees who struggle to make their English comprehensible.

I'm not sure u could call science a language. Perhaps Mathematics
Science is not a language (well, it is since it is blatantly obvious that normal people cannot understand a scientist even if he isn't using fancy words).

But english is indeed the current standard language in science. Look at pubmed. There are some chinese journals, and a few other language journals scattered around but the majority is in english.

Didn't always used to be so. German and French used to be major scientific languages, but the war changed that.

German is still the language to know if you are studying law, especially in continental Europe.

"Functionally fluent" is good enough to run a dry goods store as long as you're "intellectually fluent" in your native language. But "functionally fluent" is not good enough to make a meaningful contribution to a culture.
as long as you can make any idea understood through use of the language, that counts as functionally fluent in my book. i debate politics, and have changed a few minds with my "functionally fluent" flemish. i would say that one could make a contribution.
disagreed.

English is easy to learn as a pidgin because the macro-grammar is simple. But the micro-grammar--our gigantic glossary of idioms that make up a huge part of our speech--rivals that of Chinese, which has a special counting word that only applies to large flat objects and another just for books. You can run a software help desk in pidgin but you can't make a meaningful contribution to a culture. (And even that is difficult because if you assume that all words containing "tern" are accented on that syllable and prononce "internet" that way I think you're saying "internal" and your desk is not very helpful.)
i think you are nitpicking here....english is simple, without getting into the guts of the system that is.
however, i agree.

I'm not sure what you're referring to as the "English-speaking world." The Washington Post's chart ten years ago counted it at 341,000,000, which pretty much adds up to the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and the smaller anglophone countries. If you toss in all those Indians who speak it better than a good many Americans you've got about 400 million today.
yep.

It has a lot to do with the accident of how similar the structure of your own language is to English. At the much larger other end of the scale, I know many, many Chinese with university degrees who struggle to make their English comprehensible.
i dont know about this, though...im learning russian at a much faster rate than i learned my flemish, and the two languages have little in common.
tentatively disagreed.

i dont know about this, though...im learning russian at a much faster rate than i learned my flemish, and the two languages have little in common.
tentatively disagreed.

Learning is all about motivation and ability. :crazy:

But in all practicality, English is kinda the international language, and should one be embraced wholeheartedly around the world, English should be that one. Why? Because English is already established in the infrastructure -- and we can't afford loosing time starting all over again: in this day and age where travel and intercommunication are fast-paced and absolutely essential, where politics and commerce and whatnot need to carry on without a hiccup, where environmentalists, human rights, and animal rights must dispatch their observations to those who matter, all that's really left outside the infrastructure is for the cultural impasse to tie the knot and give their blessing -- like the Pope.

Learning is all about motivation and ability. :crazy:

i would say 95 percent of it, yeah.
linguistics involves alot of repetition, also.
luckily, my tongue is made of wacky meat, so im able to mimic fairly well.
still forget my RRRRR's sometimes though.

If there was an international language, what would it be?

I have no choice but to nominate English.

That's pretty much right, I believe.

Mandarin dominates apparently, with spanish coming in second:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

Mandarin has many more speakers than English, but they're concentrated in China. Save for the scattered communities of Chinese people around the world (a lot of whom speak Cantonese anyway), Chinese is not an international language. Spanish, however, is a fair competitor.

Plazma Inferno!:
English.. Melodic? Get off the pot. English sounds almost as canine as German. It is the most impure language that has ever existed.

Personally, I'd prefer to see Portuguese as the international language.
WOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!:cool:

:bravo:

Mandarin has many more speakers than English, but they're concentrated in China.Expect that to change before long. "Language follows the coin, not the flag." Japanese never made much of a dent because it's just too dadgum difficult to learn. Mandarin does not have that handicap.Save for the scattered communities of Chinese people around the world (a lot of whom speak Cantonese anyway), Chinese is not an international language.These days most of the younger expats speak Mandarin as their primary language and virtually all Chinese under 50 speak it fluently as a second language, even in Xiang Geng (which was once known as Hong Kong :)).Spanish, however, is a fair competitor.As is Arabic, in its own region. The number of speakers is comparable.