A Universal Language

 Blog #2: Does speaking language mean peace?

 

What is Language:

    Choosing this podcast, I wanted to get an understanding of what 'Language' was beforehand. Language is universal cognitive or social human phenomenon of a system of human communication using arbitrary signs such voice sounds, hand gestures or written symbols with compromised set of rules to send and receive messages used by a community examples would be English, ASL, French, or Spanish.

Listening to Lingthusiasm:

    Conversation if everyone could speak the same language would there be world peace and the flaws in that theory. 'Esperanto' is a conlang that was constructed to be a neutral language but it actually is not very neutral as it takes from a European language and it is not easy to learn if you are not apart of that particular group; Esperanto has a Romance look as it uses consonant vowel sequences but also slavic and germanic words are used as well. An example given was the word for Men 'Homo' and the word for women is 'Homino' showing the gender form used in the language- feminine forms are diminutive of masculine forms.

There has been more than one try to create a universal language as it was thought it would make 'world capitalism' easier but each time it would fall apart and not adapted as it is difficult for a world with vastly different language to find common one as there is still grammatical requirements that differ even through sign language even more the phonetics that go into language as well change with language. 

Universal Language:

    I agreed with the podcasters that it sounds better than it would actually be as there is too much bias in Esperanto. Meaning as it is a language made up of borrowed words, there will be a group who have a bigger advantage than others such as those who speak spanish will understand it is a gendered language where those who do not speak a gendered language will have a harder time to learn and some might feel as the presenters did that it is sexist bringing forth an issue already walking away from world peace with the language.

            

Gawne, Lauren, and Gretchen McCulloch. “Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 1: Speaking a Single Language Won't Bring about World PeaceL.” Lingthusiasm, 3 Jan. 2017, https://lingthusiasm.com/post/155357756341/transcript-lingthusiasm-episode-1-speaking-a.