We Should Have An Official Language For Earth

I will address his defence point by point. ===== 1. Argument against need My argument was that, if normal people needed a worldwide language, they would have adopted one themselves. The lack of one does not prove the converse, but it does strongly suggest that there is no real need for an imposed official universal language. His response: "Your first argument is wrong due to the fact it was not agreed upon by the nations of Earth. Think about it if these languages are not pushed by government to be taught in schools how are they supposed to become common in the world" This is a fair objection. If people do not even know about these languages (in particular, the languages exemplified by the list I provided, created specifically to bridge culture barriers), they cannot use them. The question is, do they need them in the first place? Historically, when groups of people who do not know each others' language find they need to interact, one of three things happen: A) A common language is learned, either imposed by the stronger of the two groups or mutually agreed upon (Lingua Franca: . http://en.wikipedia.org... ) B) A pidgin language is created to allow trade. (Pidgin: . http://en.wikipedia.org... ) or C) One of the groups learns the others' language. Those that need to communicate find a way to do so. One or both parties learn a shared language, and communication is established. If everyone really needed to communicate with everyone else, we would learn whatever language was most useful for that purpose. There would be no need to make it official. The closest thing to a language understood world-wide is English; estimates range from 300 million to a full billion speakers of English world wide ( . http://en.wikipedia.org... ) and it is an official language in 55 countries ( . http://en.wikipedia.org... ). Apparently, if you speak English you can communicate with up to 1/7th of the Earth's population; no one had to make it an official language for the world. Beyond that, though, the other 7/8ths of the world seem to have no need for a global language. One can assume that the vast majority of them never encounter someone that does not speak a local language; people living in rural Iowa, Ukraine, India, or Australia are not likely to have personal (or email, telephonic, etc. ) contact with someone that does not share their language. These are ordinary people, who work exclusively with people from their own language group; why should they be forced to learn in school a language they will never use? With the Internet and the growing availability of secondary education, those who wish to learn a second language can do so; why should we impose an official language on those who don't need it? The objection may be raised that we are in a global economy now, and business is done worldwide on a daily basis. This only helps my argument, because those who need to communicate to do international business already do so. They have solved this problem for themselves without any heavy-handed re-education program forcing everyone to learn a common language. "only 66% of the world populace is bilingual so what about the other 34%" This statistic is taken from Answers. com. Some anonymous person wrote it, and there is no way to know where they pulled the number from. I took a screenshot of the page . http://www.debate.org... ; if the reader will notice the "Related Answers" section down at the bottom, there are three contradictory numbers listed for the population of the world: > Almost 7 billion. > 9.9465936 billion > 1000000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Answers. com is unreliable. There is no reason to trust information solely taken from this site, and I will ignore any future citations from it. "there are only two truly world wide languages that are unofficial which are violence and money" Source? Also, your point? "if they have one language in common they would have a better sense of understanding with their fellow man" Any logical reason why this would be so? If it were true, is this vague "understanding" worth the effort to teach billions of people another language? For reasons stated above, I contend that it is not. 2. Argument against cost. I argue that the benefits to be gained are far outweighed by the costs involved in creating a global consensus for and teaching an official language. His response: "I agree. .. there must be a consensus of all the world governments" So far so good. "And of course it would take a massive effort to get countries to agree" Yes. "and we don't need every group to get along with this plan only the majority must agree" Eh, I guess; 2/3rds at least if it's going to be the "official language or Earth" as the resolution states. "when people can communicate with each other easily it can help to create more peace in the world through understanding of one another. " This is a very naive view of international relations. Governments, who last I checked were the ones in charge of declaring war, have the resources to hire competent translators. We cannot blame international conflict on mistranslations. And again, a vague feeling of understanding and slightly increased peacefulness is hardly worth the vast effort this project would require. "And for your argument about human behavior not changing is only partially true. .. " Due to character restraints I won't repost the whole of your argument here, but to address this quickly: I posted a few of the genuine problems that mankind faces (racism, war, historical division, the human nature of hatred and fear of strangers) which this project would not address. I could have given a much longer list, starting at lack of clean drinking water and going all the way to corrupt governments, but I don't have to. The point is not that humanity faces problems - you've already agreed with me that it does - but that having an official language for the whole Earth isn't going to do much if anything toward addressing those problems. If it would, you need to prove it. "Hence by allowing for the communications between children by teaching them a standard language for the world we could put an end to perpetual racism. " I fail to see how that follows. "there would be no blood shed" I ask my opponent's pardon; I used a common phrase: "blood, sweat, and tears"; I expected the reference to be understood as indicating a tremendous effort and great sacrifice, not literal bloodshed. "the true benefits would be: the ability for more people to compete in our globalized economy due to a standard for language," I dealt with that above; "a greater sense of unity for future generations of people," Warm happy feeling = not worth the cost; "less mistranslations due to the fact we all have a standard language taught in all schools alongside national and local languages. " This might be so; I concede this part of this point as plausible. I deny it is worth billions upon billions of dollars and decades of effort and the re-education of seven billion people. ===== Conclusion: I oppose the idea of having an official language for the Earth because: A) The majority of mankind has no need for an international language, and those that need to communicate internationally are already doing so without any intervention; and B) The costs of such a project would be enormous with little or no substantive benefit gained. I return this to my opponent; best of luck! - C.