Thakowsaizmu wrote:
I'll get right on telling the Erielhonan that.
Searching that gives me a terse and questionable AngelFire site and a bunch of random user profiles.
But really, though at first it may be easier to transition by way of getting translators, eventually it will be made mandatory in schools to learn the mega-State's preferred language, things printed in fringe language X will be harder to find (maybe not on the internet, but in print), and eventually the only people that will fluently speak fringe language X will be an older generation, who the younger will find backwards. Honestly, within a generation the majority would be speaking the state mandated language.
Assuming there will not be a cultural backlash against imposition of another language. Also, it depends on the size of the population and the length of the culture's written history. It's one thing to eliminate the language of a few minority tribes (or tribes that have been decimated through conquest) that never had writing. But if you are to eliminate all languages in the entire world save one, you are likely to run into some significant populations with long histories that will fight you on the issue. Maybe they would "eventually" succumb, or maybe that "eventually" target is so far in the future that this mythical overpowering hegemon wouldn't be able to sustain their aggressive language policy. Hell, they may even collapse before the "eventually" comes.
For example: America. My Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather was from Prussia. My Grandmother speaks... English. That is all. My Girlfriend's Uncle is from Vietnam. His kids don't speak a lick of Vietnamese.
This is a common experience for
immigrants, people who have left their home countries to go to a place where their mother tongue is already in the minority and not often used in officialdom. Yes, we did eliminate many indigenous languages ... though many of those were not so widely spoken, their speakers were violently reduced in number, and none of the languages in what is now the US had any form of writing. Even so, some of them still survive.
_____
Even if your hegemon were able to eliminate all other languages from the planet -- which could take generations of strict control and unbelievable exertion of power -- there will bel dialects, and if the hegemon were to collapse or even significantly soften language policy, those dialects could easily fracture into different languages.
So, yes, the scenario of a hegemonic power over all or almost all of the world assimilating an entire planet to one language is theoretically possible, if extremely unlikely. But even in the event that it occurs, the one-planet-one-language situation probably be unstable in the long run.
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