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> ... my aesthetic enjoyment ... Without asserting that English would be a good choice of global language; this seems like a terrible reason to silo huge chunk

by roenxi 3y ago

> ... my aesthetic enjoyment ... Without asserting that English would be a good choice of global language; this seems like a terrible reason to silo huge chunks of humanity from each other. There is an extremely good argument that we should all standardise on Mandarin Chinese with a better alphabet to promote good international communication. We're in an era where nuclear-armed powers are fighting each other again. Unclear international communication could literally get us all killed. The aesthetics of everyone having their own lingo is not worth the risk.

lolinder 3y ago
> this seems like a terrible reason to silo huge chunks of humanity from each other That's why I set that argument aside.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
There is a difference between "language with the most native speakers" and "language that is the most widely spoken". Mandarin may win the first one, but fails the second one dramatically. Few people outside China speak Mandarin as their first language. Mandarin has L1: 940 million, L2: 200 million -> 1.14 billion English has L1: 380 million L2: 1.077 billion -> 1.46 billion Also, most of the L2 Mandarin speakers live in China, with another Chinese dialect as their native language.