Yeah, really doesn’t say that in the OP. The thousands of languages problem is THEIR problem, not ours. We like having multiple languages, it is a natural result of societies dispersing and developing, it shows creativity, it’s a feature - not a bug!
So, as you busy yourself re-orienting goalposts, I feel I have solved for your OP.
English is clearly the most wide-spread.
Not only have there been zillions of English Language schools created and staffed with college grads lacking better job prospects, but it’s pretty much the lingua franca on the Internet – if only because every spammer, scammer, software pirate, and identity thief from China to the Balkans to sub-Saharan Africa uses it to target potential victims. :mad:
If they know just enough to perpetuate their criminal activities, they can learn just a bit more to sustain their planet. After all, if it gets astro-bulldozed, they’re out of business too! :smack:
–G!
I’ll second that. Chili doesn’t have beans in it. You can add beans to chili and make it chili with beans, but don’t ever try and pass off chili with beans as just chili.
You don’t kill most of the rest of the humans on the planet without significant cooperation on the part of the survivors.
This is totally my mistake: I should have just posted the final sentence without the oh-so-confusing hypothetical that preceded it, which obviously lead some of you to think that this was some sort of “find the hidden workaround” game. If the hypothetical still confuses you, just skip to the last sentence in the OP and work with that, o.k.?
My goalposts are right where they always were. I’m sorry you didn’t understand the premise of this thread.
Certainly short, and a vocabulary that most anyone can learn in a matter of seconds…but what if you say “I am Groot” and the alien misunderstands you and thinks you actually said “I am Groot”? That would be rather embarrassing, don’t you think?
So does that mean you’re rejecting my answer - the language everyone already knows (gesture)?
That’s a good one…if gestures are pretty much the same all over the world. I’m not saying they aren’t-I just don’t know.
Something in the back of my mind tells me that there are indeed cultures that have things like the nod and head-shake switched - but they’re an insignificant minority, and we do get a year to teach these people. (Presuming we can a)find them and b)establish enough of a (different) common language to be able to tell them what to do when the three-headed tentacle people swing by.)
You’re right, so I think it’s a solid.
Does nobody remember Close Encounters? It worked in the movies, it has to work in this hypothetical situation.
Remember-The object isn’t to communicate with the aliens. It is to get almost everyone to communicate with each other via a common language.
I would suggest learning the language in which the Martian communique is expressed. Any other might be thought offensive, and we all know what can happen when we offend someone over things like that.
If computer programming languages count, I suggest Brainfuck, just to make it interesting.
Otherwise, Esperanto.
Hey, I’m just programming from the specs as written.
In one year? None. Not a chance. Kiss your butt good-bye.
How easy is it to learn?
I am Groot was a joke, because if this really happened, I’m with Jasmine in that we’re all going to die. Maybe the average doper could learn a language in a year, but do you really think that subsistence farmers in the third world have enough hours in their day to learn a second language in under a year? They’d starve first, long before the aliens killed everyone. The only way we could even get a small majority of the human population speaking the same language would by necessity involve the largest genocide in human history.
I’d suggest that we fight the aliens instead of massacring our own kind in a pathetic attempt to suck up to space Hitler.
But then the aliens would have to learn Madarin Chinese (including the characters!). They just might kill everyone instead.