Blog Post #7: Should there be one world language that everyone speaks?

     Learning a different language is becoming more and more important these days. Some people think that having an official language would be really useful and effective. However, it has a few negative effects of setting a world language. It is because it could cause disappearing cultures, falling behind between people who can speak the official language and people who cannot, and political fights among countries.

     Having a world language may bring about disappearing languages and cultures. Some people say that an official language might help disappearing cultures because they could use the language for translating disappearing cultures. However, if there are an official language, people whose native language is not an official one might have a wrong impression on their own languages and traditions that they are inferior to the official one, especially younger people who are easily swept by. For example, in Korea, there are many stores with English names because many people think that they are much more classy than Korean names and that korean names are somewhat old-fashioned. People also try to imitate American culture while they ignore Korean culture. Like this, language dominance is really powerful that it might lead to cultural dominance and disappearing cultures.

     On top of that, having an official language would be dangerous because it may cause social selection between who have the ability to speak the official language and people who do not. This phenomenon is expected to happen much more between the elders and the youngers because most of the time, the youngers show better absorbing power in learning a new language. Also, the youngers are able to learn a new language in the school and they have to study it hard to get a good grade but elders have less opportunities and motives to learn a language.

For instance, even though English plays an important role in many part of our lives in Korea these days, a lot of elder Koreans are having a hard time learning English and most of them are not as good as younger ones. If there are a world language, this phenomenon would be worse than now and it would cause social selection.

     Last but not least, it is hard to set an official language because making only one language a dominant and official one would cause political fights among powerful countries. Some people say that world language would make our lives much more easier because we only need to learn one language, not two or three, to communicate with foreigners. However, if people have to set a world language, then they would pick among powerful countries' languages because they are already used through out the world. Then it is unavoidable that powerful countries having conflict in the process of choosing the one. Even if one country wins and the country's language become an official one, after few decades later and another country becomes the most powerful one in the world, then the country's language would be used as much as the official one, which makes no point in making an official language.

     In conclusion, having a world-wide official language would be risky because of culture disappearing, social selection between people who are able to speak the language and people who are not and dispute among powerful countries. Although people tend to see the bright side of a world language, it has too many risky effects to pick an official world language and to carry out.