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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
The idea is not unique to America, nor is it cultural imperialism. While there has never been a single universal language that everyone has spoken, they almost inevitably develop; either as a result of imperialism, diplomacy or trade. Sometimes they are an existing language, sometimes they are pigeon of several different languages.
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No, they don't. The world has always been a mish-mash of different languages, with - if you're lucky - a commonly understood second language - like Latin or Greek to fall back on. Greek (or Latin) was never a universal language, even within the Roman empire. At best one or the other was a language that most educated people understood.
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As to why? Simple, language translation is inherently limited.
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It's limited as to style - if you translate poetry into another language it won't be the same. It's not limited as to conveying ideas. (Assuming equally sophisticated readers, of course.
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Language shapes the way we think, so it is sometimes impossible to precisely translate an idea developed in one language into another (you end up with an approximation).
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Language doesn't shape the way we think. That's the discredited Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
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Thus having a common language facilitates communication since those translation issues are lessened. (Also its inconvenient to need a translator every time you want to communicate).
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Having a common language is convenient, there's no question. But it doesn't do away with translation issues since most of the people speaking the common language (which would be English today) are speaking it as a second language, with widely varying degrees of fluency.