This is an idea for all the HRD and Education ministers of the world. As per Wikipedia, following are the major 10 spoken languages, based on the number of native speakers:
Language Encarta estimate
Mandarin 1,210,000,000
Hindi/Urdu 366,000,000
English 341,000,000
Spanish 322,200,000
Arabic 422,039,637
Bengali 207,000,000
Portuguese 176,000,000
Russian 167,000,000
Japanese 125,000,000
German 100,130,000
What if all children around the world are taught these languages at school and over let’s say the next 25 years the entire world population is able to converse in all these languages.
You may ask why learn all these languages and not just pick one and make everyone learn that one language well. It’s simply because diversity and not homogenization of society is the solution to all problems that we currently face.
At the same though, it will be unimaginably useful for us to learn to communicate with people in their native languages. This reason is this. There are 4 major factors that divide human beings; colour of the skin, spoken language, day to day culture and economic status. Apart from colour of skin which we cannot change (at least through natural means) all the other 3 aspects are pretty flexible and have been developed by human beings over aeons of time to suit individual conveniences.
In my opinion if all of us are able to systematically learn all of these languages it will trigger unprecedented inter mingling of the society, help us understand other cultures better which in turn will improve and accelerate trade and the overall economic balance (Of course improving economic balance has other dependencies like availability of resources, human greed etc.) This is an idea that can be vaguely likened to a butterfly effect.
I can’t wait to see a day when I can say “Guten Morgen” to a Pakistani gentleman and hear him respond with a “Ni Hao”!!
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