What a mess. I feel that the pursuit of a universal language for either the US or the Earth is a wasteful and unnecessary, far fetched and NWOy, and a just plain unrealistic endeavor.

Number one reason? Any end game of this pursuit will ultimately lead to a resurgence in new regionally dialectic languages. Lets say after years and years and decades and decades of trying to get the US or the Earth to speak a single universal language and trillions and trillions of dollars spent reeducating and re-litigating and re-debating the process and the decision .. lets say the most expensive and unnecessary project in the history of the history of the universe actually succeeds and the US or the Earth actually recognizes a universal language and speaks in a widespread sense this now decided upon language, whatever that language would become...

...now we have a language redevelopment phase where over the next set of years and years and decades and decades of speaking this language in the multitudes of regions across the country or the Earth each individual region would develop a very specific dialect of this language that would inevitably become it's own language in itself.. eventually each regionally specific dialect would only really be understood and spoken in that region of the country or the Earth...

hmmm isn't that what we have now? A planet full of highly developed dialects of words and phrases that through years of specific regional usage have developed into the languages we have today.

So in the end game of this sort of project we would end up right where we started. Languages that are comprised of specific dialects evolved from this universal language. That is one expensive endeavor to only after completion we end up exactly where we started.

So to the questions specifically;

Does it make sense to trend toward a global language? No, it is wasteful and unnecessary.

If yes, what language would serve to communicate best? Love or math or music.

Or what hybrid of languages? We have this now in Spanglish, have you really ever tried to understand what is being said when this language is being spoken? Tough for Spanish and English speakers alike to completely understand this broken messy language.

What would be the drawbacks? The end of a project like this brings us right beck here to where we started and the expense of the project.

How could this be brought about? Hopefully it cannot be. I would seek all the voting opportunities I could find to prevent this sort of project from ever being attempted.. definition of "nip this in the bud" to eliminate what I see as what could be the most expensive and wasteful project ever.

I think we are right where we need to be as far as language goes and attempts to universalize the spoken word are just going to be expensive and unnecessary wild goose chases.

Presently, there are about 6000 languages in current use. It would be tragic to lose any of these languages, because language is a historical preservation of a people's culture. We don't know exactly all the information that may be embedded in a language, but certainly, language can influence the way we think:

I myself am particularly interested in languages that foster nonviolence.

For example, the Orang Asli aboriginal tribes of Malaysia are particularly nonviolent. Interestingly, they do not have the verb "to be." What is the significance of this? Dr. Marshall Rosenberg', the developer of NVC, the nonviolent communication language process,, discovered of these peoples that:

1) they did not have a word for selfish, as they shared everything, and
2) they did not have a word for "is," or any form of the verb "to be" since they did not label or classify things like we do.

Imagine a language where you cannot say "You are an idiot!" or "He is lazy." Imagine a language which inherently prevents you from talking violently because of its structure, where you cannot label, judge, evaluate or criticize!"

Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the field of general semantics, asserted that these particular uses of the verb "to be," promoted "demonological thinking," inaccurate perceptions of the world ultimately leading to more conflict. In fact, he developed a language called ePrime which does not have the verb "to be." Albert Ellis, one of the founders of cognitive therapy rewrote 5 of his works in ePrime.

Our whole world is based on "domination systems" and this is fostered in most of the worlds languages.

In Hannah Arendt's book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem," Eichmann was asked, "Was it difficult for you to send these tens of thousands of people to their death?" And Eichmann answered very candidly, "To tell you the truth, it was easy. Our language made it easy."

His interviewer asked what that language was, and Eichmann said, "My fellow officers and I coined our own name for our language. We called it amtssprache - 'office talk.'" When asked for examples, Eichmann said, "It's basically a language in which you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'" Amtssprache is a bureaucratic language that denies choice, with words like: should, have to, ought. And when you attempt to deny an individual's freedom, choice and autonomy, the result is anger, which can eventually lead to war. All wars are conflicts about autonomy.

duenhsiyen
Duen Hsi Yen

Yes, it makes sense to have a universal language. With the extreme increase in our ability to travel and our ability to converse over distance, we Earthlings simply need to be able to talk to each other.

English will be the best unversal language. It has developed for that role over the last few hundred years. It combines richness for literature, precision for technology and science, simplicity for simple travel and trade, and extreme adaptability. This has nothing to do with current American military or cultural strength. The language is "English", and it developed from a mix of Germanic, Nordic, and French but went on to explore the world and absorb words and ideas globally. The British Empire spanned the world, and English is still spoken throughout the old colonies and allies, now long independent.

Although English has a huge vocabulary, one can get by and usefully communicate with a very small vocabulary. The grammar is very simplified compared to most other languages with few remnants of conjugations and declensions etc. There are only 26 letters needed and no accent marks. With these advantages, and the huge user base, English is well on its way to becoming universal.

It seems to that Globish is the language of the global village. It's an English hybrid, with a simple grammar and a lexicon of just 1500 words. Spoken by 4 billion people, looks like the emerging international language. More specifically I see it as a 2nd language in addition to your mother tongue, whatever that may be. On a global scale simplicity in speaking means commubnicating better.

The article refers to Chompsky's theory of universal language - but that doesn't mean anything to do with everyone alive starting to speak the same language, or tending towards it. Instead, it implies certain deep structural similarities between, say, English and Mandarin Chinese. Opposed to that is the idea that languages are deeply different.

I haven't seen any evidence that the author of this article disagrees with most linguists. The article suggests that linguistics has moved away from that theory, and many studies of different types have been made into the tendencies of the speakers of different languages to think differently.

I don't see any practical way of getting everyone to speak the same language. History shows that people will kill and die for the right to keep speaking the language they were raised with. Imagine someone passes a law you must only speak Swahili from now on. Will you fight? Will anyone you know?

Of course certain languages are useful for global commerce. Historically these have changed as the economic and military importance of nations and cultures have changed. I hope English will be an important language for a very long time - but even during the unipolar moment between the fall of the USSR and 9/11 if you wanted to sell stuff in Finland, the smart thing was to learn Finnish.

for me i would say lets use English because its common and a lot of people in the world use it already. then its easy to learn not like other languages

From a practical perspective, English is already the international language of business. Whether or not it makes sense, according to The Straight Dope, English has overtaken French as the language of diplomacy and has become predominant in sectors such as aviation, economics, finance, and technology. It is also the primary language of more than 400 million people. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/757/whats-the-international-language-of-business-french-or-english

While it is true that English is among the most difficult languages to learn, it is difficult primarily because so many languages influence it. This linguistic influence is simply indicative of America's predominance in the world:

"As of 2006, the United States accepted more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, the number of first- generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

While the argument can be made for other languages that are phonetically simpler, I believe that the predominance of English would still overcome any attempts to supplant it as the universal language.

English is already the language of commerce and of aviation, it's the most flexible in that it easily absorbs words from other languages

A slang form of every major language combined.

English is de-facto assuming the role of universal language. English-speaking people derive advantages from this, as they do not need to acquire a foreign language to act on the international scene. But there are drawbacks as well - language is living, and if the non-natives largely exceed the natives, the development of English will be influenced from many directions.

The biggest mistake English-speaking natives could make is to declare English as the universal language, but I can hardly imagine anybody making that mistake. Instead, for convenience, English will continue to move quietly in this role.

Does English have competitors? We'd need to look at other languages with a similar 'native' basis. The list becomes preciously short. French would not qualify (not enough speakers). Chinese would, if there were only one Chinese spoken, and if it wouldn't have an alphabet that requires 1000s of signs for starters. A further barrier is that Chinese is a tone language. Hence, not a practical contender.

Given time, and considering the communication skills of Latin people, I can see Spanish one day posing a serious alternative.

As for artificial languages (Esperanto), I cannot see it ever happening on a scale of 100s of million of people, which is what it takes to have a chance at becoming the standard.