Re: One language for the world

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Wier <artabanos@...>


        (Replying to Nik Taylor)
>Possible, but likely?  Hardly, IMHO.   Such a change would require
>(a) genocide (b) nuclear holocaust or (c) both.  The fact is, it takes
>a vast accumulation of power to change people's language habits on
>even a small scale (Atatrk could do it because, hey, you got shot if
>you didn't).
    Hmmm...every case is different, of course, but don't forget (d) cultural
attraction and (e) idealism/nation-building.  Certainly the desire to be
part of the wider "civilized" culture/world was a factor in Roman Gaul and
Spain (and note that Latin had little effect in Greece, whose culture was
recognized as superior even by the Romans).    In the Indonesian case, (e)
was certainly a factor, especially in the beginning, and the "imposition" of
BI was seen as necessary to binding together disparate regions, and was
accepted with considerable enthusiasm.  And it was successful, although,
when the idealism waned and cynical mis-government took over, it now turns
out that some people are wondering if this nation needed/wanted/ought to be
built.

From the linguist's POV, this wholesale adoption of BI as an entree to the
"modern world" is disastrous to the health of small regional languages, many
of which are moribund-- and that is considered a Good Thing, sadly, both by
the political and (many) academic authorities.

>The current fashion of English is by no means assured. (snip....) Moreover,
the current geopolitical
>underpinnings of English through the so-called 'Anglo-American' model of
economic
>organization and American economic and military preeminence are not assured
>to last even one century, >
Ah yes, much can happen.  For an instructive long-term overview, look into
Toynbee.

>That having been said, English seems like the best case for a world with
>one language at this point.  (!)>
    Agreed, for the moment anyway..........


>ObConlang:   It just now occurs to me that Tlaspi, the protolanguage of my
>current project, Phaleran, did in fact envision a star-roving empire united
by
>one (official) language.>
        For some good guidelines, perhaps, on how NOT to set up an empire,
look into "Lords of the Far Horizon" (not sure of that title, search
"Ottoman history" at Amazon, publ. in 99)-- a rather catty and amusing
history of the Ottoman Empire that gives the impression of an amazingly
inept outfit.  Seems to have lasted as long as it did mainly by inertia, and
with a lot of back-handed help from the European powers.  Most of our
con-worlds/empires are much better thought out :-)) .

(snip...)
[make light] >go
>faster, 300 times faster, by speeding it through cesium gas, which,
predictably
>oddly, causes the light to exit the tube of cesium gas before it has
entered it),>
        This immediately brought to my mind the young man of Kent in the
limerick, who "instead of coming, he went".  (wheeze)

>but my question is:  how would living on another planet affect language
change?
>Lexically, yeah, I could believe that easily;  but grammatically I don't
see any
>reason for it to change in a fashion any different from the language change
>already attested on earth.>
        Unless they were truly alien, probably.  A genuine _universal_