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Communication is one of the biggest barriers faced by people around the world. With 7,391 languages spoken in the world, many believe a lingua franca would improve our lives vastly. English is already used as the language of communication in some industries but its ties to colonisation lead many to believe it is not suitable to become the global language. There have been past attempts at creating a new lingua franca, for example, Pasigraphy, which works alongside language. However, it has limited success due to its complexity. The internet is often believed to be English dominated but the presence of other languages has grown greatly in the last ten years. The cultural effect of a lingua franca would be devastating as it would cause many, if not all, other languages to die out. It still stands that there would be an economic benefit from a lingua franca but only if translation technology does not develop a foolproof method before the introduction of the lingua franca. Our report investigates these issues to assess the probability of a lingua franca becoming our future.
Project Group Two – Darius Brech, Tamsin Cowie, Annabelle MacLeod, Emily Lorimer and Lily Robertson