[…] Why are distinct languages still a thing?

There have actually been various attempts at creating a universal human language; the most famous one is called Esperanto. But it turns out that, for many reasons, we’ll probably never have a universal human language.

You can probably take a stab at a few of these reasons, and you’d be correct: Language is culture; not everyone has the internet, which would presumably be used to disseminate a universal language; getting everyone to agree on anything is difficult; politics are complicated, etc.

What I’m saying is it’s not hard to see why we still have languages. But this is not the end of the column! There are technical, scientific, and cultural factors that are instructive in exploring why humans, and Earth as currently constructed, aren’t well-suited to having a universal language. More.

See: Motherboard

Subscribe to the translation news daily digest here. See more translation news.