Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here.
Hi, language fans! I’m back with a question that I imagine we’ve all wondered about at some point during a language-learning slump. Let’s get to it!
Our question this week:
This is a great question, and you’re far from the first person to have asked it! (In fact, this was one of the most frequently asked questions we got in the Dear Duolingo inbox this year.) Some have gone further than asking about it, and have even tried to make it happen—but as you may have noticed, we’re still using many different languages: around 7,000 globally, in fact!
Your question brings up plenty of other questions—about society, identity, prehistory, geopolitics—so many, in fact, that it’s hard to distill them into one blog post! But I’ll do my best to tackle them by breaking them down into questions about our past, present, and future:
- Did humans ever speak just one language?
- Can we start speaking the same language now?
- What would happen to a global language in the future?
Did humans ever speak just one language?
This is one of the great mysteries of linguistics, and we may never know the answer! We know that humankind has been using language since prehistoric times, but because the word prehistory, by definition, means that we have no written records of it, we have no way of knowing what the first human language was, or whether all humans shared the same one at some point in the past.
By the time writing systems were developed, humans had already been speaking for tens of thousands of years, which is plenty of time for languages to change drastically, diverge, and die out. We can see language change in action over the course of our own lives, so imagine the magnitude of change that could have taken place over 100,000 years!
But even if we did start out speaking just one language, factors like geographic isolation and lack of modern communication tools resulted in thousands of languages that we’ve since grouped into hundreds of family trees. Is it possible that all 7,000 languages are actually distantly related to each other? Yes, but we’ll probably never know for sure!
Can we start speaking the same language now?
Theoretically, yes—there’s nothing stopping us from learning a new language, even as adults… but what would that look like in practice? Essentially, it would probably cause many more problems than it would solve!
Firstly, there’s the issue of which language to choose as the global lingua franca: Would it be English, because it’s the most studied language in the world? Chinese, because it’s the most common first language? A conlang like Esperanto, in an effort to level the playing field? Regardless of the choice, there would be very real ramifications for people who already spoke that language (or a similar one) versus those who didn’t.
Secondly, even if all world leaders managed to reach an agreement on which language, the question of how to actually implement it would be an endeavor of gargantuan proportions. Translating textbooks, constitutions, street signs, and many, many other things that we rely on into this new world language would require resources that many parts of the world simply don’t have access to.
Finally, what are the ethical implications of enforcing a language on parts of the population that don’t want to give up their own? It has happened many times throughout history, and we have seen that the negative consequences outweigh the positive.
That’s because language is a lot more than a collection of words: It’s a tool we use to form connections with other people and express who we are (and who we aren’t), and each individual language tells us something important about humans and what we’re capable of. For this reason, and many others, it’s important for people to have the freedom to use the language(s) that are most meaningful to them, their family, or their community.
What would happen to a global language in the future?
Imagine for a moment that we ignored the logistical and sociopolitical repercussions of implementing a single global language, and managed to get everyone on board with using it: What would come next?
We already know that language is constantly changing to fit our needs and reflect our identities. And even though many languages have official regulating bodies tasked with maintaining a standard version of that language—like the Real Academia Española and the Académie Française—that doesn’t stop them from evolving!
In other words, even if we managed to enforce a global language, it would begin changing immediately. Our population is too immense and our needs are too varied for it to ever stay the same, and then we would be back at square one—eventually speaking thousands of different languages all over again—which, in my opinion, is a great place to be! 😉
One world, thousands of languages
Even though it might sound nice to be able to communicate easily with anyone in the world, language diversity is here to stay—and that’s something to celebrate!
For more answers to your language and learning questions, get in touch with us by emailing dearduolingo@duolingo.com.
