Talk:Universal language

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Overly focusing on religion?
The introduction and a good deal of the content of this article refers to the religious idea of a universal language - when it seems this should lean more towards contemporary debate between cultures and its use in fiction, etc. --Joewithajay 21:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Interlingua propaganda?
I think the paragraph about Interlingua is not written from a NPOV. A simple link to Interlingua article would be sufficient. --FlorentGaret 19:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Does it seem to anyone else that this article avoids the fact that English is already becomming THE universal global language? It's the most taught second language, and is the main language in international politics, communications, science, sport and business.--72.139.35.107 (talk) 18:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The fact should be avoided, I think, because there are articles presenting opinions that English will not dominate the world. Some to start with:
 * http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4387421/
 * http://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/2_AssessmentTasks/assess_tuts/essay_LL/global.doc
 * http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm
 * http://films.com/id/4297/Politics_Will_English_Rule_the_World.htm
 * This is a bit misplaced (this talk does not fit inside Interlingua propaganda) --B.car (talk) 19:59, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Needs Contemporary Focus?
I agree with the assertion that the article focuses too much on the religious connotations of universal language. This should probably be added to the article on Adamic language instead of this article, which should be about the modern concept.

Esparanza? Atificial contemporary 'universal' languages should probably be included here.


 * Best universal language is of course Proto-Indo-European, because it once was Adamic language: Wikinger 17:05, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Incoherent paragraph on Krause
This paragraph has a lot of problems, and I'm not sure I understand what it's trying to say well enough to fix it. I'm moving it here until it's thoroughly fixed. (I've fixed a couple of obvious minor things.) --Jim Henry (talk) 20:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Karl Christian Friedrich Krause claimed to have found the characteristica universalis, Leibniz was not able to establish. After the epistemological ascension to the perception of the absolute and infinite Essence Krause's Doctrine of Essence (Wesenlehre) deduces all basic concepts (Kategorien) of all sciences ( with new parameters for logics, mathematics, science of spirit, science of nature, science of God, ethics, religion, and the structures of a harmonic mankind). These new concepts can only be represented by a new language, a universal language (Or-Om-Language), with a new structure corresponding to the inner structure of God. This new universal language transgresses all previous systems of language and their structures. The solution for all modern problems of logics and mathematics can be found within these new parameters and the universal language to express these structures.

Hi, my name is Dr. Siegfried Pflegerl.I have researched the works of Krause for more than 30 years, have initiated the German version of Wikipedia [ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Christian_Friedrich_Krause  Karl Christian Friedrich Krause] and edited his main work (Vorlesungen über das System der Philosophie in 1981). Special articeles are also available at http://www.internetloge.de/krause/krausismo.htm

It would take a lot of space, to explain the propensities of the Krausean universal language, and her I can only quote the two German articles I wrote about this subject: •	 * Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich: Universale Logik •	 * Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause: Universale Mathematik I would ask you either to accept my posting or to explain me the basics of a version, you would be able to accept. Thanks Dr. S. Pflegerl


 * I am afraid I do not read German anywhere near well enough to understand the articles you cite. The paragraph as I quoted it above while removing it (temporarily, I hope) from the main body of the article is simply not clear writing, whether from being too academically obscure (targeted narrowly to people specialized in the subject-area and understanding its special jargon), or not written by a native speaker of English, or for some other reason, and as I said before I don't understand what it's trying to say well enough  to improve its wording.  Someone else who understands German and is a good writer in English will have to come along and fix this eventually, I guess. --Jim Henry (talk) 01:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Enneagram?
The section on "Enneagram" seems possibly NPOV and definitely unclear in what it's trying to say. It needs to be exapnded, probably, and some sentences recast to attribute certain views to specific people rather than state them as undisputed facts. --Jim Henry (talk) kvn

Maths
I was extremely disappointed not to see Mathematics listed? --147.70.123.22 (talk) 13:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

as was I, except i was disappointed that MATH was no mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C54:4400:C76:602D:DBEE:6174:1ED8 (talk) 03:57, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Why are universal language and lingua franca confused?
Medieval Latin, Sanskrit, Classical Chinese or Aramaic in post-Assyrian times are cases of lingua franca for a big region. They are not "universal language" because entire world doesn't speak them. 76.24.104.52 (talk) 17:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not intended for "cheapshots" against Americans.
In fairness, because of the "shameful ignorance" remark, it should be noted that in searching for data on how many people in Mexico speak English, the first page in the results is "http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_from_mexico_speak_english". The question on the page is "How many people from mexico speak english?" and the answer is simply "spanish". So that should give the reader a more balanced report, indicating that America is not the only country on Earth where many people speak one language. Notice that the answer is a grammatical nightmare, as well, in my opinion.

It should be taken into account that many people around the world live out meaningful, productive lives with no need of speaking a language other than their native one. Many people do, and many people do not. People are different. That is supposed to be one of the major principles of diversity. (Or is it?)

Following up with a more exhaustive search, it looks like the number of Mexicans who can speak a language other than Spanish is around 10%.

Other research shows that 50% of Europeans speak more than one language. Remember that means that 50% of them DO NOT!! What is wrong with the 50% that do not? NOTHING! What is wrong with ANY American who does not? EVERYTHING. In Europe, the countries are about the size of our states! Of course they would have more opportunity to travel to other countries. In America, average people have access to Canada, where English IS an official language, and Mexico. A vast majority of our population is in the northeast. Therefore most people who can't afford to travel much will visit Canada. I myself visited Canada when I was young, and was excited that I would hear French and get to practice it. I was not too happy when all I heard people speaking in Canada was English.

As far as other large countries, in Russia everyone speaks Russian, some speak English as English is considered by many to be a universal language (before this starts a flame thread, know that my family's first langauge is not English, we simply are not a prideful people and can admit to the truth). In Australia, they speak English, and as they do not conveniently border ANY other countries, the majority of people who cannot regularly afford to travel will be stuck with English.

It is probably wrong to judge an individual or a group of people simply by what language(s) they speak. Unfortunately, this is a matter of pride for many people. Oh by the way as far as pride goes, America is by FAR and AWAY the country that contributes the most to other countries around the world in both manpower (personpower?) and financially, and you will never see us judging other countries by their lack of support to the needy around the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.26.171 (talk) 18:09, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * While I disagree with many of the points in your rant (for one, your last stab is particularly weak and frankly, you defeat it yourself in the selfsame sentence), but you are right, that bit is uncalled for and until it can be sourced (if ever), I think it should be left out of the article. I took it out and moved it here for further consideration.
 * ''A more recent idea collaborates the fundamentals of English as we know it today and the punctuation of other European languages, predominantly Spanish. The language is constructed similar to modern English, but uses the somewhat shameful ignorance of 'native' English speakers, who, generally have a poorer grasp on other languages than those who speak English as a second language. For ease of learning and for maximum understanding and for purposes of smooth transition, words are 'rated', the higher rated words are those most popular and likely to be most useful and so, they form the foundations of the language and allow people to communicate efficiently and quickly, albeit primitive initially.
 * TomorrowTime (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree it should be out. It's unsourced at best and the "shameful ignorance" bit is just ... extraordinary. Best out. DBaK (talk) 21:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Bible bit
I can't understand what's wrong with the Bible/Babel bit which an editor keeps removing. I hold no brief at all for the factual nature of the Bible, but it does exist, and is old. The disputed paragraph seems to me merely to say that the IDEA of a UL is at least as old as that bit of Bible. This it seems to me is incontestable - the bible exists, the bible is old, the bible talks about this idea, the idea has existed that long. I don't see where there is made a claim that the bible story is fact - I would agree that to claim that would be outrageous and would not belong here. But that isn't what is being said here - merely that an old book talks about the universal language idea. That bit's true. There's this old book - it talks about that idea. Where, please, is the POV in that? Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 22:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The bible is only about 2000 years old seeing as Christianity formed around that time. I doubt that it has the earliest mention of universal language; it's just the most popular. There is also an obvious bias toward Christianity; shouldn't the claims of universal language from all other religions be represented? Saying that the idea is "as old as the bible" is just unnecessary and the paragraph probably wouldn't exist in this article if it weren't for Christianity being a dominant religion. …Grayshi  talk ■ my contribs 18:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see what's the problem. The Bible may not be the most reliable source when it comes to historical facts, but the fact that it mentions the phenomenon of an universal language is notable in itself. It doesn't prove this was the first time, but it does prove the idea is old. Of course, any mentionings about a universal language even older than that would be worth mentioning, too! &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  19:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Why specifically the Bible? All it is is a book that a fraction of the world population considers holy scripture. If I were to put that Harry Potter is the first popular book to deal with magic on Magic (paranormal), there's no doubt that it would be removed as it is an irrelevant detail that only readers of the book would find relevant. Nobody has responded yet as to why the Christian perspective on a universal language is so important. It mentions "confusion of tongues", "Fall of Man", etc, none of which is of any interest to people of other religions or no religion. …Grayshi  talk ■ my contribs 20:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your point. You can hardly call Christianity irrelevant or the Bible an unnotable book. The Christian perspective is important, just like many other perspectives are. And this is not about the Bible as a source of reliable information, but just as a means to prove that the concept already existed at that time. If you know about other ancient sources of a religious or non-religious nature that deal with the subject, then by all means go ahead and add them. &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  00:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know how much more I can explain it. It is POV, plain and simple. The rest of the article is based on the factual ideas of multiple people while this reference to the Bible, which I honestly consider a fictitious novel, tells of some mythical event where a single language suddenly split into multiple other languages. It's either all or nothing; represent every religion that has a story about universal languages in a separate section or remove the Bible reference. …Grayshi  talk ■ my contribs 19:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * To me the Bible is a fictious novel, too. But that is of no importance. And there's nothing POV in saying that an idea is already referenced to in the Bible; such a statement it's not supposed to prove anything but that. It would be POV if someone wrote that the Bible proves that there has been a universal language, but that seems not to be the case here. And for the rest I agree with you, so go ahead and add the story of other religions. &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  21:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't actually mean that to be taken literally, so I apologize for the wording. What I am getting at is to be fair, absolutely every religion that is and was in existence must be represented in order to maintain neutrality. The paragraph shoves religious text into a mostly factual article with supported historic findings and it simply doesn't fit. Like I said before, using the Bible as a reference in the article is akin to citing Harry Potter and its concept in an article about magic. …Grayshi  talk ■ my contribs 21:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a little bit spurious: fairness would really just mean that all the most notable pieces of ancient fiction (which means myths, which tend to be religious) that pertain to the subject are mentioned. I notice that the article opens by discussing universal languages in the context of mythical ideas, and the first section is about that, so since the facts of these myths are among the facts being discussed, it doesn't seem wrong to include samples (akin to an article about "magic in popular culture"), but as I say below, the article is pulling in two different directions. 81.131.40.225 (talk) 03:31, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * indent I assume this diff is the issue
 * Firstly I think the "tower of babel" story is at least relevant to the article, here are some points


 * The historical accurracy of the Bible is not the main issue - an unreligious person can take it as an early example of a collection of myths
 * Further mythological stories of an "universal language" would be great, and balance any perceived bias
 * Suggest move from the lead section and place in a section named "Universal language in mythology"
 * However I'm not totally satified with the presentation of the removed section - I think some of the meta-explanation is superfluous - ie comparison with the fall of man, and discussion of the golden age.. A little off topic.
 * There must be other "original human language myths" ? I've asked at Reference_desk/Humanities for other examples Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * More found some - see Mythical origins of language. Universal grammar is related.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:54, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Grayshi, to say that the Bible is only 2000 years is obviously ridiculous; the Babel story predates Christianity by several centuries at least, probably by thousands of years actually. How is that biased towards Christianity? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I do understand Grayshi's concern regarding that diff. IMO it's pretty self-serving - the underlying vibe I get from it is that the biblical timeline is somehow the only important measure of time in today's world (yes, I have a problem with "at least as old as the bible" - to me it signifies that nothing could possibly be older than the bible). Now, to be clear, even if I am in the camp of people who see the bible as nothing more than an ancient collection of myths, I do strongly think it should be mentioned in this article, but perhaps, as has been suggested above, not in the lede but in a separate section on "universal language in mythology", and with a less POV wording. I suggest:
 * ''The idea of a universal language is mentioned in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The people of the world formerly spoke a universal Adamic language, but God divided the language into several dialects after the people of Babel decided to build a tower that would reach the Heavens.
 * I hope that is a more NPOV version, if not, we can work on it. Also, I'm not decided on the inclusion of the reference to Kabbalah or the Golden age bit - someone with some more knowledge should weigh in on those two. TomorrowTime (talk) 20:28, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see why views derived from the Christian bible should get any more weight here than, say, Proto-Human language (presently appearing in this article in the See also section). Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  20:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In-coming links show that people have been linking to this page from articles describing "edenic language" and similar christian topics. (which is an explanation not an excuse). I totally agree that the article should be balanced, and cover viewpoints from the whole world.


 * Grayshi has removed a lot of the stuff that discussed the topic from a singularily christian viewpoint, and I've added a section on "legends" as well as re-adding some stuff they over-enthusiatically removed (with alterations)
 * It definately needs references, and in reality expert attention - there's a tag Template:expert which may be worth adding.Sf5xeplus (talk) 20:52, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to have started this topic then been unable to discuss it but I'm delighted to see that things have moved on a bit. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 22:05, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) The Genesis account of the Tower of Babel is almost certainly over 2,500 years old (not just 2,000), and the Bible has huge importance in world cultural history.
 * 2) However, the specific articles are Tower of Babel and Adamic language; I'm not sure that there's a reason to go into great detail here... AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to me this article is about two very different things: mythical universal languages, and trade languages. This causes contention over content. Perhaps the whole article counts as WP:synthesis? 81.131.40.225 (talk) 03:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

'Contemporary ideas' section
"A recent philosophical synthesis has also connected Leibniz's interest in environmental engineering with Systems Ecology. It has been proposed that a modern form of Leibniz's Characteristica Universalis is the Energy Systems Language of Systems Ecology, which has been used to develop ecological-economic systems overviews of landscapes, technologies, and Nations. One consequence of this seems to be that Leibniz's Enlightenment project is alive and being applied globally in the evolution of ecological sustainability."

Seriously asking: WTF is this means? It is some postmodern rumble, without any actuall sense. --91.213.255.7 (talk) 07:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Seconded. This section, among others, is Seriously Messed Up. 64.24.208.5 (talk) 04:14, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

This article has multiple issues.
Wow, for as much talk as there's been, you'd think the article would be less broken by now... of course, most of the talk was about a petty edit war over whether or not the Babel story was relevant, which can probably be traced back to there not being any clear consensus on what the article is even actually supposed to be about in the first place...

List of grievances:

1. It has no unified focus talking variously about trade languages, IALs, mythical languages philosophical languages, and others, without really any well-organized way of putting them together into a cohesive article.

2. Several sections are an absolute garbled mess. The Mythological Universal Languages section makes sense for about 1 paragraph before it goes insane. Also, the Contemporary ideas section is nigh-unintelligible from the beginning.

If no one objects, I might remove some of the mangled garbage from the body, but that alone won't fix the massive flaws which go down to the root of the article...

64.24.208.5 (talk) 04:26, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Toki Pona and Unish
Toki Pona is a constructed minimalistic language that recently became popular and has now an almost 15 years of history, though it wasn't meant to be an auxiliary language and its 123 root words are a bit limiting the language to everday situations only.

Unish on the other hand is an academic try for forming an international auxiliary language that is really based on more than a bunch European languages, taking in account also Korean, Chinese, Hindi and Russian.

Should we add these languages to this article or are they considered too unimportant ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.22.218.36 (talk) 17:19, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Seventeenth century

 * Recognizable strands in the contemporary ideas on universal languages took form only in Early Modern Europe.

Does this sentence mean that Renaissance Europe's ideas on the subject had no clear strands, or what? I hesitate to insult the writer by reading contemporary as a sloppy synonym for modern. —Tamfang (talk) 22:20, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Aramaic ought to be included for sure
Prof. Holger Gzella qualifies Aramaic as the first World Language in A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Not sure about Sumerian and Akkadian, but I believe these languages also shared degrees of universality for millennia. Artaynte (talk) 15:58, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Removed lines from introduction about “universal” but still regional languages
Removed lines-

In other traditions, there is less interest in or a general deflection of the question. The written Classical Chinese languageis still read widely but pronounced differently by readers in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan; for centuries it was a de facto universal literary language for a broad-based culture. In something of the same way Sanskrit in India and Nepal, Tamil in India and Sri Lanka and Pali in Sri Lanka and in Theravada countries of South-East Asia (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia), were literary languages for many for whom they were not their mother tongue. Comparably, the Latin language (qua Medieval Latin) was in effect a universal language of literati in the Middle Ages, and the language of the Vulgate Bible in the area of Catholicism, which covered most of Western Europe and parts of Northern and Central Europe also. In a more practical fashion, trade languages, such as ancient Koine Greek, may be seen as a kind of real universal language, that was used for commerce. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 16AdityaG09 (talk • contribs) 04:01, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

"It could be said plausibly that mathematics is the universal language of the world that all are capable of understanding."
"It could be said plausibly that mathematics is the universal language of the world that all are capable of understanding." Aside from being unsourced, what does this even mean? If it means that everyone does understand math, that's obviously false. If it means everyone is capable of understanding math if they study it, then that's probably also true of any language, any scientific discipline, any religion, any philosophy, or any form of knowledge on earth. 2601:646:101:4D90:3952:302D:CFC8:D883 (talk) 04:38, 21 December 2021 (UTC)