Discussion of Whether The World Would Be Better if We Spoke Fewer Languages

In this era of globalization and modernization, there are a lot of new and amazing technological products that have been invented, such as smartphones and the Internet which make our life more comfortable. Those products have shortened the distance among people and stimulated the growth of worldwide economic. With the aid of these products, the trade is not limited in a certain region anymore and international trade has played a pivotal role in the economic growth of a country. Therefore, the ability to communicate with others who come from different nations has become an important skill for the employee to enter the global marketplace. Some people argue that if more people around the world fewer languages, such as “big language” instead of others “small” language to enhance global communication, then the world would be better as the language barrier had already eliminated. In this essay, I stand on the opposite side, that is the world would not be better as we expect if we spoke fewer languages and discuss the reasons that support my stand.

Speaking fewer languages would cause some of us to lose our own cultural identity and the connection with our ancestors. This is because language is a carrier of culture and expresses its own cultural and historical elements. In Chinese, we have lots of surnames and these surnames have their history. For instance, the surname ‘符’ exists as their ancestor was the general that used to command the army with the commander’s seal (represented as ‘兵符’ in Chinese). From this example, we can see that language is a bridge that links us with our ancestors and carries a lot of historical information. On the other hand, language is also a symbol of our cultural identity. If we do not speak our languages, then we would lose our cultural identity and also the sense of belonging to the same cultural group. Without this strong sense of belonging, we could not unite together to create a brighter and better future. Once we desired to speak fewer languages, then we had to make use of a few languages only and this would make us overlook the living nature of other languages and have a feeling of prestige among them. This forms a contradiction with the quote “All men are created equal” that we used to persist and make sure everyone could be treated fairly. In the 1960s, the Chinese in Malaysia persisted to encourage their children to study Mandarin by building Chinese independent schools and hosting the public examination even though they faced a lot of obstacles, such as got no funds from the government and the government tried to prohibit their works. Why do the Chinese in Malaysia persist to establish their education system although this qualification is not certified by the Ministry of Education Malaysia? This is because they tend to preserve their own cultural identity from losing under these adverse circumstances. Thus, speaking fewer languages would make us lose our own cultural identity and sense of belonging to a cultural group and this would not help the world be better.

If we spoke fewer languages to achieve higher communication efficiency, the world would not be better as we hope. That is because with speaking more languages, people have higher analytical skills and cognitive skills compared to others who speak the fewer language. Our brain, is similar to muscles, needs to do more exercise or our cognitive ability would be reduced. To learn a new language, we have to memorise the new rules and vocabulary and be familiar with them. Therefore, we have to pay more attention and our brain is strengthened when learning a new language. Consequently, people who learn more language would not be distracted easily by the disturbance and their cognitive skills are enhanced. As Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has proposed, different languages encode different categories and speakers of different languages, therefore, think about the world in different ways. Hence, if we speak more languages, then we can think from a different perspective and it helps us to make the right decision. Our cognitive abilities and analytical skills have been boosted via learning a new language. There is a study that has compared the age of onset of symptoms in 91 monolingual and 93 bilingual patients who had been diagnosed with dementia. Under the same condition, the age of dementia onset for bilinguals was 4 years later than it was for the monolinguals––a highly significant difference. With speaking more languages, the age of dementia patients would increase and the budget for social security to take care of them could also be reduced. Speaking more languages can stimulate economic growth by providing a large population of the labour force with higher cognitive skills, analytical thinking skills, and language skills. Speaking fewer languages would not lead us to a better world but speaking more languages does.

If we spoke fewer languages (the ‘big’ language), then the purpose to do that might not be reached, that is global communication might not occur. How could we say that? Global communication is defined as the communication practice that occurs across international borders. As human is a type of social animals, we need to communicate and cooperate with others to fulfil our psychological and social need. Nowadays, we have to communicate across the international borders with other population that speaks another language and from different cultural background via using the ‘big’ language because our desire cannot be satisfied by our population and the environment that we stay. According to the Need-hierarchy theory suggested by Abraham Maslow, our needs can be categorised into five types, that are psychological needs, safety needs, love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization and our motivations to do something come from these needs. Once all our needs could be gratified, then we would lose the motivation to do something. If people spoke fewer languages, then our population would become large enough and our need could be met by them. At that time, we would have no motivation to interact across the borders with others who are from different populations anymore. Therefore, local communication might occur instead of global communication if we spoke fewer languages. According to the Eurobarometer report 2012, there was 39% of the French population can speak English. This might be caused by French is already a type of bigger language and has been spoken by the bigger population. Therefore, their needs are already satisfied by this population and they would be lack of motivation to learn English to interact with other big population. From this example, we can deduct that speaking fewer languages might lead to a lack of motivation to be in contact with others. The purpose to speak fewer languages, that is to enhance global communication cannot be achieved and local communication will ensue instead of global communication.

In a nutshell, speaking fewer languages seems to be desirable for everyone to enhance global communication so that we could exchange our view without considering the language barrier and also can stimulate economic growth to build a better world. But speaking the fewer languages would not bring us to a better future as it will cause us to lose our cultural identity and a large population of the more productive labour force. With these two concerns, we can see that speaking the fewer language would not lead us to s brighter future. Moreover, speaking fewer languages would enhance local communication merely instead of global communication as we do not have any motivation to communicate with other language groups. Every language represents its own culture and also demonstrates the creativity and uniqueness of their own culture. Therefore, all cultures should be preserved by speaking more languages so that we can remain our connection between us and our ancestor and the uniqueness of our culture.