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Why is there no global language that at least nearly half the world speaks (3.5 billion, I'm talkin', including non-native speakers) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Hextubewontallowme@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives...

English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English%20(1%2C452%20million%20speakers)&text=According%20to%20Ethnologue%2C%20English%20is,native%20and%20non%2Dnative%20speakers.

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 41 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

That's not how language or communication work. Humans develop language in real time and in small cohorts. You are lucky if you can understand youth slang by the time you hit 40 and you want to force an artificial lingua franca on four billion people?

Plus, who said language uniformity is a positive? Linguistic diversity is a feature, not a bug. Language is tied to culture, identity and a whole bunch of antrhopological elements. Entire ethnicities are defined by their language. It's bad enough that US cultural imperialism has forced half the planet to watch the same movies and TV shows, why would we do the same with language? If you ask me, there's way too much English out there as it is.

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

It’s bad enough that US cultural imperialism has forced half the planet to watch the same movies and TV shows

I have a comm for you