I didn’t mean to suggest that in 100 years, the world’s language would become Klingon or Na’vi. The goal of this post was to dork out to a new fictional language.

I think that the choice is between English or Esperanto as the future global language rather than an untried project.

Your readers may be interested in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LPVcsL2k0

Dr Kvasnak teaches English at Florida Atlantic University.

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

(Sorry for the lack of proper characters; I’m typing on a computer that doesn’t have Chinese installed.)

Too bad it doesn’t say, “Soup Nazi”.

I liked the etymological explanation!

Kevin

I sometimes wonder about inflated language ability in dreams. But if I can’t even have that in my dreams, my life is just way too sad.

I think I recently dreamed in another language, but there’s so many possibilities that I’ve actually forgotten which one it was. Probably French (which is the language that is for me like your German…)

Sweet dreams,
Kevin

I notice that Barack Obama wants everyone to learn another language, but which one should it be? The British learn French, the Australians study Japanese, and the Americans prefer Spanish. Yet this leaves both Mandarin Chinese and Arabic out of the equation.

Why not decide on a neutral non-national language, taught worldwide, in all nations?

An interesting video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LV9XU

Evidence can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

My gut reaction is that even if China becomes hegemon during our lifetime, Chinese will join English as a “second” global language–not replace it. Why? Because English isn’t easy to become fluent in, but it is very easy to speak badly or tolerably. Chinese, on the other hand, is full stop one of the most complex languages to learn on any level. That doesn’t mean that kids wouldn’t learn Chinese, of course. But at the heart of it, a lingua franca is about facilitating communication among speakers of different backgrounds–and English is well-suited for that.

Furthermore, English also has one of the most diverse vocabularies out there. Anybody who’s studied for a spelling bee (or watched a film about one) knows that English words have roots in Latin, Ancient Greek, French, etc instead of having its roots mostly in a single linguistic source. But beyond even that, English is remarkably accommodating about creating or borrowing new words: thus, Global English (as a phenomenon) is able to take in words from Hindi, Indonesian, and pretty much every other language on the planet without a hitch. That flexibility is among its greatest strengths.

The correct forms (depending on who you were talking to) are:

¡No comas! (singular informal–tú form)
¡No coma! (singular formal–usted form)
¡No coman! (plural ustedes form)

Remember that negative commands take opposite endings: er and ir verb endings start with “a” and ar verbs endings start with “e”.

If you ever do want a kid to eat something, though, “¡come! is entirely accurate. Affirmative commands always take endings corresponding to the type of verb it is.

At least we have some hope: Nashville voters recently rejected an English-only measure.