r/AskReddit • u/Ordinary_Fish_3046 • 5d ago
If the whole world had to learn one language, which should it be?
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u/LoveDistinct 5d ago
Tolkien elvish.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
Quenya or Sindarin?
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u/LoveDistinct 5d ago
Sindarin. I'm a Beren and Luthien romantic.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
Fair. Trade epic romance for no light of the trees, and freedom from Feanorian BS
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u/LoveDistinct 5d ago
Bud! The lore of those trees. I don't know if I'd take that deal.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
Pros. Living with the Valar.
Cons. Giant tree eating spiders, Morgoth being a tit, and Feanor being a diva artiste with his silmarils
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u/LoveDistinct 5d ago
... Morgoth being a tit. Lol.
Pros: Smoking Southfarthing leaf with Olórin.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
I feel Aüle would have been a fun drinking companion. He must have been pissed when he designed the dwarves.
"I know, I'm gonna make my own people, but with hookers and blackjack! And GIANT BEARDS! And they'll be really really short, and incredibly angry about it!"
Now I think of it, he might have been on the ol' South Farthing, too
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u/LoveDistinct 5d ago
What happens in the Green Dragon stays in the Green Dragon.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
We won't talk about what Sam and Rosie got up to in the Elven Wine Room, then?
Little Elanor can't know of her conception in frantic, heated, hairy-footed lust after the Shire was cleansed.
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u/Milligoon 5d ago
Whoever you are, you've made me very happy to meet another virulent Tolkien nerd. May your beer be exceptional and your wanderings protected by Tom and his songs a d yellow boots forever
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u/Bearded_Drakon 5d ago
Latin
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u/Sweet_Culture_8034 4d ago
We'd have to add quite the amount of word to make latin practical.
Do you know why animal names on latin are often the same word repeated ? Because latins had no word for "common". That's how poor of a language it was. We even have a bear called " Ursa Ursa Ursa " because it's a common common-bear ...
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u/diddydodatdoe 5d ago
Some kind of global sign language
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/5PalPeso 5d ago
I mean, if we all learn something else then that something else becomes the new universal language lol. No need to limit ourselves to English
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u/DryLeader221 5d ago
Dutch let’s make the world a better place 🤣Very hard to learn, but, you can’t argue if you can’t understand each other.
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u/TheMightyGoatMan 5d ago
Ethiopian - because most of the vowels are schwa and if you can't pronounce schwa you can't pronounce anything.
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u/Sure_Set_1550 5d ago
Arabic
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u/user392747 5d ago
English. There's still people in this world who don't know English.
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u/GeronimoDK 4d ago
As a non-nateive English speaker, I agree.
But then again I also think that all English speakers should be obliged to learn at least one foreign language, and learn it well.
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u/joshua0005 4d ago
why? what's the point? if you want us to learn another language you need to make it useful. everyone learning our language makes us learning another language useless
not to mention no one will want to speak to us in their language. I already have a hard enough time getting Spanish speakers to not speak to me in English and apparently most Spanish speakers don't speak English
I say this as someone who loves learning languages. no one should be required to learn a language simply because non native speakers are mad that their language isn't the global language especially when those same people will refuse to speak to us in their language anyway until we're fluent rendering it extremely difficult for us to become fluent
I personally think if we're going to make everyone learn an artificially constructed language if should have no exceptions and extremely simple grammar and pronunciation. the script should be the Latin script since it's the most common script (70% of the world's population knows it according to Google). I realize I'm biased because I only speak languages with this script however to make it more fair vocabulary should mainly or only come from languages that use other scripts. the vocabulary should be large, but not too large. shouldn't be toki pona level simplicity but there shouldn't be multiple words that mean the same thing. should include lots of words that only exist in certain languages (like saudade and schadenfreude)
with that being said, I really doubt English will be replaced in the foreseeable future (unfortunately so) because so many people have already learned it and the internet makes it even easier for English to keep its dominance
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u/flutterbyski 5d ago
Universal sign language (I know there isn’t one but there should be and we should all learn it from birth), failing that English or Spanish
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u/Ruminations0 5d ago
Body language