Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives…

  1. English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English (1%2C452 million speakers)&text=According to Ethnologue%2C English is,native and non-native speakers.

    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
      3·
      8 months ago

      How did unipolar prevent a majority language?

      How did wars and genocides prevent a majority language?

      How is learning the majority language useless to your career?

      • whoreticulture
        1·
        8 months ago

        If I didn’t speak English, it would be useful but not necessary to learn. You can get a job as a line cook, cleaner, all sorts of jobs. At that point learning English could help get another job, but you need a high level of fluency for it to be useful. Imagine you’re working full-time, but possibly more than full-time given the hourly pay of the jobs you are qualified for, and maybe you also have a family you are caring for…might be more prudent to stay the course at your current job than to spend thousands of hours gaining fluency for the chance to change careers.