Chinese has the most native speakers. Spanish has the most countries and English is the most common second language. So between the three of them you have a huge chunk of the world population covered.
Not saying there really should be an "official" language but there will need to be a lingua franca because putting two dozen languages on a street sign doesn't help anyone.
When I was a kid I learned to speak enough Chinese I could get around the city but I never could get the hang of reading it. In two years I doubt I learned more then 100 or so characters. So yeah I feel ya.
2000 characters gives you a ton of coverage unless you're working with obscure topics (which you'll pick up from context anyway). I would also say that speaking is significantly more important that reading, writing, or listening, and if you focus on that as a first objective (but not the only objective of course), everything else will come pretty naturally.
a new version of esperanto where they dont use those wonky letters and is fully compatible with current keyboards without having to use extra buttons or alt codes tho pls
Do Ithkuil. Not only does it look like a cool sci-fi language, but it is also extremely (impractically) information dense. "Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx" translates to "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point", and is 5 characters of written script.
But on a more serious note, we would have to do everything we can to ensure that all languages survive, for historical and cultural reasons. You can do things in a lot of languages that you can't do in other languages, some expressions just don't work in other languages.
There's literally no reason to have one global language. If I went to the other side of the world and everyone sounded the same as me I would freak out. Like maybe 5-10 regional languages but preserve all languages and even revive dead ones.
I know, the Ithkuil thing is a bit, it is REALLY not practical for actual use.
That whistling language on that one Spanish island where the shepards communicate with whistles
It's technically just Spanish in whistle form. The grammar and vocabulary is identical and the sounds are just mapped to different whistles. Still super cool, tho.
