Importance of a single language as an international language
The 21st century can be best illustrated in phrases like standardization, economical globalization and integration. It was under this circumstance that the importance of a single language as international official language is expanded increasingly. With a single international language, it will be easier to communicate with each other. This standardization of language promotes a common mode of communication among ethnic groups as well aspromoting the efficiency for international affairs both in politics and economy and decrease and diminishes the misunderstanding and the differences caused by culture differences, thus expedite strong international links and regional exchange and accelerate the development of the whole world.
While the process is accompanied with the loss of identity and culture of different regions, which cannot be tolerated for most of people who want to protect their ethnic culture. They claimed that the most essential part of language learning is being overlooked, namely the fact that by learning another language people change their perspectives upon another culture and upon your own.
Language is the carrier of culture. People are actually products of our own cultures. My own experience of learning English will be a good case in point, the concepts and worldviews that are transferred through language are so determining in how we perceive the world that I would almost want that all Children all over the world were obliged to learn the language of another continent. Therefore, monolingual policy absolutely exerts adverse impact on cultivating identity and loyalty.
In my opinion, what the world needs is not one presupposed or planned world-language but a population that finds it normal to speak several (inter) national languages. This way they would clearly see the similarities among all men, but also the different ways of perceiving human existence.
Let’s take Singapore as an example, Children must learn English so that they will have a window to the knowledge, technology and expertise of the modern world. They must know their mother tongues to enable them to know what makes us what we are. The bilingual policy, as it evolved, afforded every child in school the opportunity to become bilingual and biliterate in two official languages, by which, the government give official recognition to the linguistic and cultural pluralism within
I therefore plead for more language learning and understanding of other cultures instead of forcing everyone to learn just one artificial language.
