Topic > Discussion on whether the world would be better if we spoke fewer languages

In this era of globalization and modernization, many new and amazing technological products have been invented, such as smartphones and the Internet, which make our lives more convenient. These products have shortened distances between people and stimulated the growth of the world economy. With the help of these products, trade is no longer limited to a certain region and international trade has played a vital 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 to enable the employee to enter the global market. Some people argue that if more people around the world used fewer languages, such as the “big language” instead of other “small” languages, to improve global communication, then the world would be better since the language barrier would have already been eliminated. In this essay I take the opposite side, that is, the world would not be as better as we expect if we spoke fewer languages ​​and discussed the reasons that support my position. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Speaking fewer languages ​​would cause some of us to lose our cultural identity and connection to our ancestors. This is because language is a bearer of culture and expresses its own cultural and historical elements. In Chinese we have many surnames and these surnames have their own history. For example, the surname "符" exists because their ancestor was the general who commanded 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 connects us to our ancestors and carries a lot of historical information. On the other hand, language is also a symbol of our cultural identity. If we did not speak our languages, we would lose our cultural identity and even the sense of belonging to the same cultural group. Without this strong sense of belonging, we could not come together to create a better and brighter future. Once we wanted to speak fewer languages, then we had to use only a few and this would make us neglect the living nature of other languages ​​and have a feeling of prestige among them. This is a contradiction to the “All men are created equal” quote that we used to persist and ensure that everyone could be treated equally. In the 1960s, the Chinese in Malaysia continued to encourage their children to study Mandarin by building independent Chinese schools and hosting the public examination even though they faced many obstacles, such as not getting funding from the government and the government tried to ban it works for them. Why do the Chinese in Malaysia persist in establishing their own education system even though this qualification is not certified by the Malaysian Ministry of Education? This is because they tend to preserve their cultural identity from loss in these adverse circumstances. Speaking fewer languages, therefore, would make us lose our cultural identity and sense of belonging to a cultural group and this would not help the world to be better. If we spoke fewer languages ​​to achieve greater communication efficiency, the world would not be better as we know it. Hope. This is because by speaking multiple languages, people have higher analytical and cognitive abilities than others who speak fewer languages. Our brain, similar to muscles, needs to do more exercise otherwise our cognitive capacity would be reduced. To learn a new language, we need to memorize the new rules and vocabulary and become familiar with them. Therefore, we must pay more attention and our brainsit is strengthened when we learn a new language. As a result, people who learn multiple languages ​​are not easily distracted by the disorder and their cognitive abilities are improved. As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposed, different languages ​​encode different categories and speakers of different languages, therefore, think about the world in different ways. So, if we speak multiple languages, we can think from a different perspective and this helps us make the right decision. Our cognitive abilities and analytical abilities have been enhanced through learning a new language. There is a study that compared the age of onset of symptoms in 91 monolingual and 93 bilingual patients who were diagnosed with dementia. Under the same conditions, the age of onset of dementia for bilinguals was 4 years later than for monolinguals – a highly significant difference. By speaking more languages, the age of dementia patients would increase and the budget allocated to social security to care for them could also be reduced. Speaking multiple languages ​​can spur economic growth by providing a large population of the workforce with higher cognitive abilities, analytical thinking skills, and language skills. Speaking fewer languages ​​would not lead us to a better world, but speaking more languages ​​would. If we spoke fewer languages ​​(the “big” language), then the purpose for doing so might not be achieved, i.e. global communication might not occur. How could we tell? Global communication is defined as the practice of communication that occurs across international borders. Since human being is a kind of social animal, we need to communicate and cooperate with others to satisfy our psychological and social needs. Nowadays, we have to communicate across international borders with other populations speaking another language and from a different cultural background using the "big" language because our desire cannot be satisfied by our population and environment in which we live. According to the hierarchy of needs theory suggested by Abraham Maslow, our needs can be classified into five types, namely psychological needs, safety needs, love needs, esteem needs and self-realization and our motivations to do something come from these needs . Once all our needs could be gratified, we would lose the motivation to do anything. If people spoke fewer languages, our population would become large enough and our needs could be met by them. At that point, we would no longer have any motivation to interact across borders with others from different populations. Therefore, if we spoke fewer languages, local communication could occur instead of global communication. According to the 2012 Eurobarometer report, 39% of the French population speaks English. This could be caused by the fact that French is already a more widespread type of language and was spoken by a larger population. Therefore, their needs are already met by this population and they would lack motivation to learn English to interact with other large populations. From this example we can deduce that speaking fewer languages ​​could lead to a lack of motivation to stay in contact with others. The aim of speaking fewer languages, i.e. improving global communication, cannot be achieved and local communication will result instead of global communication. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom EssayIn a Simply put, speaking fewer languages ​​seems to be desirable for everyone to improve global communication so that we can exchange our views without.