Lenguas y más Lenguas ¿No habrá una para todos?

The Neverending Story is a famous book about a boy named Bastian that arrives to Fantasia, a fairytale world that is in danger of disappearing. All the inhabitants of Fantasia speak two languages, the mother one and other to communicate with any creature of their world. As a result, Greenskin warriors, gnomes, dragons, magicians and mortal monsters can converse without problems.

Similar to Fantasia’s natives, human beings have established a universal language. It means, the world has a common idiom and its use allows a successful communication. But this universal language has always changed, from Latin and Greek to English. Even, in the last decades, some linguistic experts are betting on the creation of a completely new language like Esperanto and Interlingua.

During the Medieval Age, intellectuals and people related to the church used Latin as their common language. But this only united people who had the privileges and opportunities to study and learn reading and writing, excluding poor and ordinary people.

Nowadays, English is considered the universal language; around the whole world, many schools give English classes to increase the quantity of persons that know that language – although we have to considerer that in many cases, this teaching has not really a high quality-; and being able to speak it properly is a requirement of the majority of the good jobs.

But is English the best candidate for universal language? Following the example of Fantasia’s inhabitants, human beings should have a special language for universal communication. Why?

First we have to accept that English is not the universal language because its structure and simplicity, but because English-speaking countries have an important and decisive role in the world market. English was not chosen; it was imposed by many political, social and economical situations.

The most natively-spoken language is Chinese, followed by Spanish. 1213 millions of people speak Chinese as their mother tongue, while English is spoken by only 328 millions.

So, we can say that in order to make easy the expansion of a universal language, people must learn Chinese, since almost a third of the world population already speaks it. This is when we have to talk about how easy to learn certain language is. Chinese is a really difficult and complex idiom, in which the tone that you use can change all the sense of what you are saying. So, it is neither a good option for universal language. Although the most recent generations are being witnesses that this country is gaining importance in the international community, so, as it happened with English, maybe we will have to learn it too.

English is considered an easy language, but it depends on which language the person knows already. For example, for Russian, Arab and Asiatic people, who have a different alphabet, English is really a challenge.

Therefore a new language is the unique option to solve the problem of successful communication among the races. Linguistic experts have already created some synthetic languages that have not have success in their mission. But this is a problem of diffusion that countries could overcome if they really decide to adopt an international auxiliary language.

A synthetic idiom, as Esperanto and Interlingua, could avoid the problems of learning because it was created in such way that contains patrons and sounds that are shared for the majority of the languages. Also, it would not giving preference to any country, so ideas as spread of Imperialism would be eliminated. And there would not be tensions between the nations for that kind of systems and doctrines.

AN INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE WOULD MEAN EQUALITY FOR EVERYBODY

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Alejandra Retana