7 ms·

Uniting in language is a sign of increased communication and opportunity. The sooner we have a global language, the better. More opportunity, less war. I would

Uniting in language is a sign of increased communication and opportunity. The sooner we have a global language, the better. More opportunity, less war. I would think a bunch of engineers trying to create stuff would agree on that. All of that being said, the study of language is very important, and the differences that exist should be recorded for scientific study. Maybe it even makes sense to preserve the real outlying communities (http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120 http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386...) by forcibly cutting them off from the global economy. But major languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese) are redundant standards that should be consolidated ASAP.

onion2k 10y ago
A common global language doesn't have to be a human language though. Technology to translate in real-time already exists, and is likely to improve far more quickly than anything that requires a rewrite of our cultural and political systems. It's a great deal more likely we'll speak as many languages as we do now but use technology to understand many more.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  "Technology to translate in real-time already exists" No. It does not. I do some translation work and a lot of multilingual interaction. There is no decent translation technology even for written communication outside technical documents. Even that is only barely decent between European languages. A serious attempt at usable translation of even the simplest texts between Asian languages and others does not yet exist. Real time translation would multiply the speech recognition problem onto that still-imaginary translation technology. I will admit there is a lot of hype but there is no substitute for human translators nor for simply learning a new language anywhere on the horizon.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    It's early days, but the cutting edge stuff works for some limited value of "works". It's just about usable for casual conversations. But that's not the point I was making; what I'm saying is simply that the likelihood of getting working real-time translation on a computer is considerably higher than getting everyone to agree on a universal single language. I can see computer-based real-time translation getting to the point where it's putting translators out of jobs in the next few decades. I can't ever imagine humanity transitioning to a single language, or even a limited scope single language for business. It just won't happen.
- yongjik 10y ago
  Even professional translators have a hard time translating real time. To pick a random example, "There's Jim's dog. Look, he's so happy to see me." "Actually, it's she." Try translating that into a language without grammatical gender: you could either spend thirty seconds explaining that English speakers have this weird habit of using different words for dogs based on their sex, or you're in for some serious improvization. Or even better, "There's Jim's brother." Korean has a word for "elder brother", another for "younger sibling (of either sex)", but not a generic singular "brother of unspecified relative age". Good luck!
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Machine translation may never be perfect. That doesn't mean it'll never be useful.
- tombh 10y ago
  I'm sure more academic minds than mine have considered this, but yes, I totally agree, we are moving towards universal communication and culture and that has little to do with speaking the same language. I would argue that the Internet, capitalism and global transport are bringing us nearer to a point where productive mutual intelligibility is less and less of an obstacle.
akie 10y ago
For the sake of argument, let's say that "we" "agree" on standardizing on one of the world's most spoken languages: Spanish. This now means that you yourself need to master Spanish, that your kids need to master Spanish, and that all public use of English will need to disappear. Do you think that is feasible? I don't think that will ever happen, not even in a 1000 years.
- akie 10y ago
  Over the course of 2000 years, the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages have not merged into one language, for example - despite close contact...
  - restalis 10y ago
    Yes and no. Romanian had a Slavic layer in it, which you may count as a result of the significant interaction between Romance and Slavic populations around the Carpathian region. French and more-so English, can be counted in the same way as the by-product of Romance and Germanic groups intermingling. I'm not aquatinted with the degree of Germanic and Slavic mixing, but I presume that there should be (or have been) plenty as well. Just remember that Poland become actually polish only after the deportation of Germans, at the end of WW2. The language groups haven't merged more because of limited movement and interaction of their populace, a political effect. The political reasons were also the ones that actually worked in the other direction - of isolating masses of people and encouraging independent development of their cultural identity. The conclusion is that linguistic convergence is not the only natural effect that you may expect with time. Take a large enough mono-linguistic space, and give it a couple of centuries. After that you'll start noticing enough differences to warrant acknowledgment of distinct dialects or even languages.
- vacri 10y ago
  The only real candidates with wide spread are English and Chinese (well, Mandarin). Tons of people already speak English as a second language, and Chinese has a wide diaspora with communities everywhere. Your point is still valid, but Spanish isn't going to be the 'one' - if you were going to push the world to learn Spanish (because, say, it's easier in general than English or Chinese), then you may as well go the whole hog and get everyone to learn a synthetic language like Esperanto, which is easier again.
vanderZwan 10y ago
You make a very reasonable but demonstrably false assumption about language: that it is all about A trying to communicate an idea to B, as clearly and as efficiently as possible, and all involved are cooperative. Reality is often much more complicated. Take the simple example of A talking to B with listener C. There's the scenario where a A wants to talk to B but without being understood by C. Or the reverse where A wants C to understand something but not B, whilst talking to B. And we can go on like this - see for example, this[0] RSA Animate by Steve Pinker about why we don't just say things explicitly most of the time. As a result of all this we get stuff like jargon, coded slang, read-between-the-lines expressions, and yes: foreign languages. Because if you apply that insight to human groups, it becomes obvious that with human "tribes", the use of language is as much a way of excluding outsiders as it is about clear communication. In this light, stuff like youth slang always evolving into something unintelligible to adults makes perfect sense. As long as there is a desire for selecting who doesn't understand you (which I think will always be the case), language diversification will be a thing. If you have access to New Scientist articles, this one[1] sums it up nicely [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941-700-war-of-words-the-language-paradox-explained/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941-700-war-of-w...
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  Addendum: it just so happens that there currently is another article on HN about this "veiled communication" phenomenon: Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704216 (replying to myself because I cannot edit my comment anymore)
homarp 10y ago
Uniting in language is a sign of increased communication and opportunity. The sooner we have a global language, the better. More opportunity, less duplicate code. I would think a bunch of engineers trying to create stuff would agree on that. All of that being said, the study of language is very important, and the differences that exist should be recorded for scientific study. Maybe it even makes sense to preserve the real outlying communities (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/) by forcibly cutting them off from the more general online communities. But major languages (Java, Javascript, C#) are redundant standards that should be consolidated ASAP.

onion2k 10y ago

A common global language doesn't have to be a human language though. Technology to translate in real-time already exists, and is likely to improve far more quickly than anything that requires a rewrite of our cultural and political systems. It's a great deal more likely we'll speak as many languages as we do now but use technology to understand many more.

WildUtah 10y ago
"Technology to translate in real-time already exists" No. It does not. I do some translation work and a lot of multilingual interaction. There is no decent translation technology even for written communication outside technical documents. Even that is only barely decent between European languages. A serious attempt at usable translation of even the simplest texts between Asian languages and others does not yet exist. Real time translation would multiply the speech recognition problem onto that still-imaginary translation technology. I will admit there is a lot of hype but there is no substitute for human translators nor for simply learning a new language anywhere on the horizon.
- onion2k 10y ago
  It's early days, but the cutting edge stuff works for some limited value of "works". It's just about usable for casual conversations. But that's not the point I was making; what I'm saying is simply that the likelihood of getting working real-time translation on a computer is considerably higher than getting everyone to agree on a universal single language. I can see computer-based real-time translation getting to the point where it's putting translators out of jobs in the next few decades. I can't ever imagine humanity transitioning to a single language, or even a limited scope single language for business. It just won't happen.
yongjik 10y ago
Even professional translators have a hard time translating real time. To pick a random example, "There's Jim's dog. Look, he's so happy to see me." "Actually, it's she." Try translating that into a language without grammatical gender: you could either spend thirty seconds explaining that English speakers have this weird habit of using different words for dogs based on their sex, or you're in for some serious improvization. Or even better, "There's Jim's brother." Korean has a word for "elder brother", another for "younger sibling (of either sex)", but not a generic singular "brother of unspecified relative age". Good luck!
- onion2k 10y ago
  Machine translation may never be perfect. That doesn't mean it'll never be useful.
tombh 10y ago
I'm sure more academic minds than mine have considered this, but yes, I totally agree, we are moving towards universal communication and culture and that has little to do with speaking the same language. I would argue that the Internet, capitalism and global transport are bringing us nearer to a point where productive mutual intelligibility is less and less of an obstacle.

akie 10y ago

For the sake of argument, let's say that "we" "agree" on standardizing on one of the world's most spoken languages: Spanish. This now means that you yourself need to master Spanish, that your kids need to master Spanish, and that all public use of English will need to disappear. Do you think that is feasible? I don't think that will ever happen, not even in a 1000 years.

akie 10y ago
Over the course of 2000 years, the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages have not merged into one language, for example - despite close contact...
- restalis 10y ago
  Yes and no. Romanian had a Slavic layer in it, which you may count as a result of the significant interaction between Romance and Slavic populations around the Carpathian region. French and more-so English, can be counted in the same way as the by-product of Romance and Germanic groups intermingling. I'm not aquatinted with the degree of Germanic and Slavic mixing, but I presume that there should be (or have been) plenty as well. Just remember that Poland become actually polish only after the deportation of Germans, at the end of WW2. The language groups haven't merged more because of limited movement and interaction of their populace, a political effect. The political reasons were also the ones that actually worked in the other direction - of isolating masses of people and encouraging independent development of their cultural identity. The conclusion is that linguistic convergence is not the only natural effect that you may expect with time. Take a large enough mono-linguistic space, and give it a couple of centuries. After that you'll start noticing enough differences to warrant acknowledgment of distinct dialects or even languages.
vacri 10y ago
The only real candidates with wide spread are English and Chinese (well, Mandarin). Tons of people already speak English as a second language, and Chinese has a wide diaspora with communities everywhere. Your point is still valid, but Spanish isn't going to be the 'one' - if you were going to push the world to learn Spanish (because, say, it's easier in general than English or Chinese), then you may as well go the whole hog and get everyone to learn a synthetic language like Esperanto, which is easier again.

vanderZwan 10y ago

You make a very reasonable but demonstrably false assumption about language: that it is all about A trying to communicate an idea to B, as clearly and as efficiently as possible, and all involved are cooperative. Reality is often much more complicated. Take the simple example of A talking to B with listener C. There's the scenario where a A wants to talk to B but without being understood by C. Or the reverse where A wants C to understand something but not B, whilst talking to B. And we can go on like this - see for example, this[0] RSA Animate by Steve Pinker about why we don't just say things explicitly most of the time. As a result of all this we get stuff like jargon, coded slang, read-between-the-lines expressions, and yes: foreign languages. Because if you apply that insight to human groups, it becomes obvious that with human "tribes", the use of language is as much a way of excluding outsiders as it is about clear communication. In this light, stuff like youth slang always evolving into something unintelligible to adults makes perfect sense. As long as there is a desire for selecting who doesn't understand you (which I think will always be the case), language diversification will be a thing. If you have access to New Scientist articles, this one[1] sums it up nicely [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941-700-war-of-words-the-language-paradox-explained/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628941-700-war-of-w...

vanderZwan 10y ago
Addendum: it just so happens that there currently is another article on HN about this "veiled communication" phenomenon: Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704216 (replying to myself because I cannot edit my comment anymore)

homarp 10y ago

Uniting in language is a sign of increased communication and opportunity. The sooner we have a global language, the better. More opportunity, less duplicate code. I would think a bunch of engineers trying to create stuff would agree on that. All of that being said, the study of language is very important, and the differences that exist should be recorded for scientific study. Maybe it even makes sense to preserve the real outlying communities (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/) by forcibly cutting them off from the more general online communities. But major languages (Java, Javascript, C#) are redundant standards that should be consolidated ASAP.