There's a New World Language Coming!
We are soon to witness
the beginning evolution of a new world language. A single language for
the world that will satisfy the long held dreams of philosophers of human
language, but it will not be an artificially invented language, neither
will it be phonetic. It has probably already begun its genesis on the internet.
It will be developed by the free, spontaneous choices and contributions
of all of us. When unicode or some better solution effectively puts every
glyph of the world at our finger tips (keyboard) for easy typing without
needing to change fonts, in fact not needing to do anything special before
including a certain glyph or glyphs in an email or on a web page, and when
it is no longer neccessary to wonder if the person reading your letter
has the font, because every one will have all unicode glyphs on their system,
then billions of individuals around the globe from every language family
will begin innovating in their emails and chatrooms. Just as with emoticons,
but with all the world's glyphs in the mix instead of just ascii. When
a certain glyph or glyph combo becomes popular it will circle the globe
at light speed entering all language families simultaneously.
This process
will take centuries, but this new world language will evolve as a new part
of each language which is understood by all, until eventually all the worlds
written languages will become significantly integrated. Each national written
language will then be like a dialect of the new world language. Essentially,
since the internet will remove all practical barriers that prevent communication
among the world's populations, each separate language will begin very slowly
but surely changing
toward some center between them all.
This will not
happen to spoken language however, for a very much longer period of time,
probably never. We are talking here about a world written language.
Spoken languages will not evolve into this new world language because of a simple
truth in human nature. None of us want to talk on the telephone to a significant
number of strangers because when you surrender your ear to someone, they've
got more of your unbroken attention than you wish to give. If everyone
who emails me called on the phone instead, I know exactly where I'd put
that phone!!! But I love getting email, it makes my day! Even more so from
strangers in a foreign land, because I read it at my leisure, and answer
when and if I wish. You all know this and you know exactly why you don't
want your phone number on your website. Verbal language is for intimates
and others who we must talk to. That won't be changed by modern communications.
So, verbal languages will not unify under this new dynamic.
What technology is
still needed to get this process going?
65,000 world glyphs all equally available on everyone's keyboard and
pre-installed on a future release of Windows. In ten years, an old outdated
PC will have at least 10 gigs of storage with an operating system better
than Windows98, so that's definitely not a limiting problem regarding this.
The keyboard is
the
problem, but will be easily solved.
A keyboard with just
50 keys,
(50 x 50 x 50 = 125,000)
could easily type any of
125,000 glyphs,
by touching only three
keys simultaneously or
sequentially.
Virtual keyboards will light up different glyph
options as you type. For any key that you hold or
touch,
an entire character
set will display on the remaining keys for you to choose from. When typing
only ascii is desired, you will set a selector on your keyboard for single
key typing. If you want just several thousand characters available, you
set the selector for double key typing so that you will not get a glyph
till you touch the second key. Set it for triple key typing for all the
glyphs in the world.
There should be no required sequence for touching
the keys to get a glyph,
and no requirement to hold a key down while typing the next key.
In Windows right now, you must hold the
alt key
first,
then type three numbers.
This slows typing speeds by disallowing
touching the keys at the same time. Also holding down keys should not be
required. It would be better if we could touch a key and release it and
see the glyph options on the virtual keyboard change.
Why can it be known with some certainty that a spontaneous evolution
of a world language is soon to commence?
Human language groups evolve
linguistic barriers
between each other because some
other kind of barrier
already exists, such as an ocean separating continents, major mountain
ranges, deserts, tundras too cold and vast to cross frequently, etc. Lack
of interaction between groups isolated from each other prevents the growth
of familiarity with each others vocabulary and linguistic habits.
Some linguistic
theories claim that similar languages must have once come from a single
parent language in the distant past. But it is more likey that languages
are similar because the groups have been interacting with each other in
the recent past. Polish and Russian are similar because those groups of
people are near each other and the terrain is traversable. If a major but
traversable mountain chain separates two groups of humans at the time they
begin to invent language, two separate languages will evolve right from
the start, and right from the start the two languages will share some vocabulary
and structure, mainly centered around vocabulary for items of trade. An
example is the similar word for tea all around the world.
Now add telephone
and the internet into consideration and you can expect those two language
groups to interact even more unless some other barrier prevents this, and
then increasing sharing of vocabulary gradually integrates the two.
In the absence of barriers keeping people apart, languages converge.
In the presence of barriers, languages diverge.
To help you think
about this principle, consider hypothetically, that a telepathic species
would evolve a single language because the geographic barriers would fail
to prevent interaction of the separated groups.
The average person might
have
telepals
anywhere on the globe. These telepal communications would
keep separated groups interacting, thus sharing familiarities of language.
Ofcourse, if the telepathy was of the verbal kind, privacy would be lacking
because you can't get away from a voice by turning your head or closing
your eyes.
Now think of the internet. The
interconnectedness
of the world
of the future will someday be as complete as this
hypothetical telepathic world,
with one big difference. We choose how, when, and with whom to connect.
Each person can interact with hundreds, even thousands of strangers from
foreign lands every day if you include visitors to a persons website. While
there is no direct to and fro communication with most website visitors,
we are never the less changing each other, and each other's linguistic habits.
Now let's discuss
why telephone is negligible with regard to this dynamic and therefore why
spoken languages will not integrate. Then we will discuss what extremely advanced
technology we would need before an integration dynamic begins for
verbal language.
As modern as our world is, jet travel is still incredibly
slow, and does not move enough people around the world into strange foreign
(to them)
cultures to get them interacting verbally. So in this case the barrier
is simple distance and time. Remember, verbal communication tends very
stongly to be used only with intimates, and other people within our physical
environment. And even then we usually don't initiate conversations with
people who talk "funny" even when we do travel. But on the internet, we
all frequently encounter foreign language writing, and with no embarressment
or shyness involved as is often the case with strangers in person.
Over
centuries, the world's populations will become increasingly familiar with
foreign writing if only by frequent accidental visits to pages,
and eventually,
familiarity with the general appearance of foreign writing will give way to
understanding a few words and increasingly everyone will become a little bit multilingual.
Over centuries, each language group will absorb the vocabulary
of all the others and the borders between will fall away.
But the dynamic
is not there for verbal language, and for another obvious reason besides
the expense of long distance phone calls. Nobody phones people who cannot
understand their language! Never! That is why the invention of the telephone
did not introduce a dynamic like this years ago. The attempt to talk to
a foreigner must be in person for two reasons. Usually you rely on someone
translating so you need a minimum of three people. Also you need to point
to things to get the other person to tell you their words for objects.
Anyone who has tried this knows it must be done in person.
So when might this
verbal language integration dynamic begin? Not for a very long time. It
won't begin even in a small way until an Orient
Express type airliner can get you from New York to Tokyo in under
an hour, and inexpensively so that a significant portion of populations
can interact personally. A prototype may be tested in ten years but it
will be decades before they are as common as 727s. Even this though will
not be significant enough to start a dynamic similar to what is now starting
with written communication.
Really, for this integration dynamic to start
with verbal language would require technology from Star Trek; the transporters
that allow instantaneous light-speed teleportation. So at this point I
will stop talking about verbal language and now concentrate only on written
language.
Now back down to earth
to a little phenomenon going on right now in chat rooms and email messages:
Emoticons. Ah you say, what do those silly smileys have to do with a major
new world dynamic? Well some of you may be laughing at me right now, but
think for a minute. Those little glyphs have grown in number beyond counting
and circled the globe into all languages for two simple reasons. They are
so incredibly easy to type, and they begin as faces, which everyone from
all language groups understand. Even when they are not explained well in
text translations, they have a way of clarifying themselves to new users
of every language by speaking directly to their eyes. Add to this the phenomena
of all these computer icons on everyones computers and we add more vocabulary
to this coming world written language, which ofcourse is not a language,
yet.
Then add to this the increasing use of fonts like wingdings,
dingbats, and numerous other glyph type fonts that are now included with
every installation of Windows. Anyone in the world can put "font face"
tags in their web pages for these fonts and don't need to worry whether
the guy on the other end has the font.
The key to this whole process getting into full swing is
UNICODE,
and keyboard software which provides easy use of hundreds, even thousands of fonts as
if they were all one font. In practice unicode will be
one world font.
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