Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives…

  1. English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English (1%2C452 million speakers)&text=According to Ethnologue%2C English is,native and non-native speakers.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    7·
    6 months ago

    For sure. A dissapointing number of IALs have nearly all their vocab from european languages, but there are a few that try earnestly to source their vocab from a wide set of language families. Any global initiative for an IAL needs to have a global vocabulary set to have any hopes of being introduced.

    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 months ago

      If you choose vocabulary that is culturally neutral, then that vocabulary is not easily recognisable.

      There’s no workaround for that trade-off.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
        2·
        6 months ago

        Recognizeable for whom, is the question. The majority of IALs to date have had a highly eurocentric vocabulary, so they can’t be recognizeable to even a plurality of the world.

        • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
          2·
          6 months ago

          Correct reasoning, incorrect facts.

          46% of the world speak Indo-European languages as a mother tongue.

          Can’t do better than that. No other option comes close.

          • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
            2·
            6 months ago

            Aren’t you Irish? You know the English colonizers did their best to wipe out the Irish language and replace it with the one you’re advocating for right???

              • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
                1·
                6 months ago

                Kind of wild that you use Haiti as an example here, considering the european genocide of the Taino people, as well as the european importation of african slaves, two groups that didn’t speak european languages, and had their languages erased by the same process you’re advocating for.

              • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
                1·
                6 months ago

                So why are you advocating for the displacement of the majority of the world’s language families based on european languages popularity it gained through colonial displacement?

                The majority of the world don’t speak european languages.

                • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
                  1·
                  6 months ago

                  So why are you advocating for the displacement of the majority of the world’s language families based on european languages popularity it gained through colonial displacement?

                  Same reason you are advocating wife-beating (i.e. I never said anything like that)

                  The majority of the world don’t speak european languages.

                  Correct. That’s was our starting point: there’s no language that the majority of the world do speak.

                  Indo-European is spoken by a 46% minority.

                  About 19% of the world’s population speak the Indo-Iranian branch alone. It’s by far the largest of the 8 branches by number of speakers. By number of languages (which includes tiny languages) it comprises about ⅔ of the family –

                  For example there are 884 million speakers of Hindi/Urdu + Bengali + Marathi + Gujarati + Odia + Punjabi in India, and Pakistan is almost all Indo-European (Indo-Aryan and Iranic).

                  Agus in theannta sin, tá Gaeilge (teanga Ind-Eorpach/Ceiltís) ag 0.0002125% den daonra domhanda!