Say What?

A rather interesting thing happened at work today. Well, I thought it was interesting but many others may not. However, being the despotic overlord of this here blog, today's occurrence shall henceforth be considered a "rather interesting thing". Disobedience to this doctrine will not be tolerated.

Ahem.... where was I?.... oh yes

I had transmitted an email of general inquiry to my counterpart in the faraway city of Santiago, Chile. A response was received far too quickly which upon opening revealed itself to be in the language of the Spanish. This intrigued me, not because of it's content which I could take a very educated guess at deciphering, but as to what a chap as myself with almost zero Spanish language skills should do with it. Now, usually I would entreaty the skills of a resident colleague who hails from the city of Madrid. "Nay!", said I and with my technogeek inner self singing in delight, I copied and pasted the email into "Google - Translate", selected the relevant languages and pressed the button for action to commence.

Success!

There in all it's glory was a perfect translation (checked by my colleague from Madrid) confirming what I suspected, that my counterpart was on holiday and extensive instructions on who should be contacted to assist with my inquiry.

In further thought, a question arose a little while ago regarding what language we will all be speaking in the future. With borders tumbling, electronic communication and inexpensive travel in abundance, will individual languages survive? Will there be one "Super Language" that we will all eventually submit to? This is not a new enquiry, but I was thinking of the options:

- Esperanto
There's been a lot of talk about this being a "universal language". I don't think so. It's a constructed language (by Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof). I don't think we are going to accept a constructed language. We want something that has evolved naturally, that has the influence of generations of people who added little quirks and curiosities to it. Constructed languages are like pre-packaged frozen lasagne, they do the job but are not very satisfying.

- English
Probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, I believe there will be resistance to it's adoption as a primary language in many parts of the world, simply due to nationalistic pride. Fair enough I say !

- An Amalgamation of Different Languages
This is already happening. Multicultural societies inject an influence on local language. The result is colourful verbalization, the evolution of language that us wordy people enjoy so much.

There is another option, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Referring back to the "rather interesting thing" mentioned earlier, I wonder if technology will soon answer the question for us. If someone like me with feeble Spanish language skills can easily convert a message into English, perhaps there will be no need to concern ourselves. Ah yes, I can hear those with multi-language skills tut-tutting, "Hold on there Dan, you can't rely on Google Translate to give you an ACCURATE translation". But here's the thing, is it possible that the increased use of these translation tools will evolve our languages in a way that reduces the chances of translation error?

Without striking fear into hearts, will the language of the future be..... Googlish ?