There have been several attempts to create a universal language. An international
auxiliarly language would have the benefit of making possible an exchange of ideas without the delay of
translation. The desire for simple, easy to learn language for
communication with people who share no
native tongue was first felt about 300 years ago.
Most attempts to create a universal language involved the creation of a new, artificially constructed language, but some existing languages have also been proposed. The attempts can be divided into three groups: written artificial languages, non-artificial (sometimes 'revival') languages, and visual languages.
Artificial languages
One suggested plan to get a world language adopted would be to have a popular language like
English absorb others, as English is already native to hundreds of millions of people. (Some might suggest
Chinese or
Spanish instead.)
French was thought of as a
universal language for years, hence the term "
lingua franca". These all have difficulties. For example, English has a fairly simple grammar, but horribly
irregular pronunciation and spelling. Alternatively, a language could be created
ad hoc, as suggested by people as early as
Descartes in 1629. No widespread efforts were made to actually
implement this idea until 1879, however, when
Johann Martin Schleyer created
Volapük. The Volapük community grew quickly, but, like many similar experiments to follow, collapsed under too-tight control from above.
The most successful of the artificial languages is Esperanto, created by Louis Zamenhof in 1887. Esperanto spread rapidly, but was given a serious setback during World War II. Some critics complain of too many sibilants, unnecessary syntactic rules, and an overreliance on circumflexed orthography.
Non-artificial languages
Attempts have also been made to simplify existing languages. Of these,
Basic English has been most popular. Although this is not considered an artificial language, it still a
designed language.
Quite different (though similar in appearance sometimes) to simplified English are the (English) Pidgins. Pidgins are protolanguages that come into existence in multilingual areas. They develop naturally when people with different linguistic backgrounds are in contact and need to communicate about basic, day-to-day things. Pidgins have no or extremely limited syntax, but when passed on as a primary language to a new generation of children, turn into creoles, which are true languages, having been shaped by the principles of Universal Grammar.
Visual languages
Created languages that rely solely on
non-arbitrary signs, symbols, pictures or icons. This requirement for a
non-arbitrary mapping between ideas and the pictures that represent them excludes all natural languages (such as Chinese and late
ancient Egyptian). Attempts to create a useful visual language have generally failed, as one essential feature of any language powerful enough to be
infinitely productive (that is, to be able to describe
any idea) is that it must have an arbitrary mapping between its
semantics and its physical (
visual/
auditory)
representation.