It is the year two thousand and fifteen and the universal language is… nonexistent. This is a good thing.
By sociological standards, a culture is comprised of material elements such as its art, buildings, and technology, as well as non-material components. These non-material components are the collective ways of thinking passed along from generation to generation within any given society, and language is primarily considered the most essential non-material. So replacing every language in existence with some universal atrocity would very well serve as an efficient manner of destroying millenniums of culture.
After all, the isms and adages and nuances of every language are tailored to its people. The Sami people of Northern Europe have over 180 words concerning snow and ice, which are put to good use in that climate. They might be forced to live with just “snow” and “ice” with a universal language, or countries bordering the Equator would have to acquire hundreds of words describing a climate they’ll never see. Clearly it would be just as unreasonable trying to convince the whole world to greet each other with handshakes and dress in a uniform of drug-rugs, Hunter boots, and Calvin Klein underwear.
Yet there are still many proponents of having one universal language instilled into each human offspring at birth. Unsurprisingly enough, most of these proponents believe that language should be English – not some conglomeration of the most spoken languages, but pure, uncompromised English. For those of you who did not take the time to look this fact up on Wikipedia two minutes ago, there are 335 million English speakers on this great planet. Divide that by the 7.125 billion people on Earth, and the output is a smallish fraction. Furthermore, the most spoken language on this planet by far is Chinese (1.197 billion) followed by Spanish (414 million), so cultural and moral qualms aside, it logistically doesn’t even make sense to establish English of all languages as the universal one.
As verified by all of human history, people will hold onto their culture to the death, and rightfully so. It is not so easy to convince a person to substitute their beloved native tongue with a clumsy new language. Alternatively, some simply don’t have the time or means to learn English. No matter the reason, you will in your lifetime run into someone who Bù huì shuō yīng yǔ, no habla Inglés, doesn’t speak English. In the meantime, we should all strive to up the prefix in front of our "-lingual." It won’t hurt.
