Interlingua is Doomed
The dream of Interlingua-a common language that all the people of
the world speak-has long existed in many peoples minds. They and
their organizations have for many years tried to push this
through, but the odds are still against them.
The benefits of a common language on the planet are obvious,
language barriers would no longer exist, books and newspapers
could be printed in a single international edition distributed
worldwide. In order to achieve this however there are plenty of
obstacles along the way. The first question, which already throws
us into a major snag, is which language do we choose? To many of
us English is the obvious answer, since its expansion is enormous
an it is the closest thing to a common language we have today.
But this is where the Interlingua enthusiasts pull the brake
saying, no, it must be a new constructed language everyone learns
from scratch, because if we use an already existing natural
language, all its native speakers would form an elite. The fact
that the Interlingua enthusiasts normally excel in the very
constructed language they advocate does not seem to strike them
as unfair at all.
Not that the people of this planet have ever managed to fully
agree on anything, but let us just suppose that the world was to
reform and decide to teach its citizens an all new language. The
nations that would learn it the quickest would of course be the
industrialized countries with the resources for good public
education, incidentally the very nations that know and are
learning, the international business language-English
An inevitable fact is that the English language is already in the
process of taking over the world through film, TV, popular music
not to mention the Internet. Even more important, English being
the international business language there is a lot of money
invested in it and it therefore has the full support of the
commercial industry and right or wrong, money rules this world!
Were we still to miraculously manage to teach the whole planet
the very same language, another problem would become painfully
evident; maintaining it. All languages form local dialects, new
words and expressions, especially in isolated and remote
communities. Different people have different needs for words
dictated by their surroundings and their professions. Based on
the need of terminology the everyday vocabulary of a fisherman in
the North Atlantic is bound to be quite different from that of a
tobacco farmer in Turkey or a hot dog vendor in New York City. It
is hardly realistic to think that any organization or
international board of language would be able to map, keep track
of and set standards for every single entity in the world that
someone feels there is a need to have a word for.
We have not yet come close to teaching all the people of the
world to read and write their own native language that they are
exposed to every day. What makes us think that we can teach them
an all new language, especially with the economic interests of
the world opposing it.
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