Fiona McCade: Let’s talk about some meaningful dialogue

Imagine being able to talk to absolutely anybody, just like you’re one of them. You can immediately create understanding and empathy. That stranger holding a gun to your head – you can talk him down, have a chat, use all your powers of persuasion. That foreign diplomat who won’t sign the treaty – you can show her that really, you’re all in this together, and solve your problems over a cosy cuppa, without any interpreters.

Such a super power would also work on animals, as well as invading aliens, but if current statistics are correct, its usefulness may have a shelf-life.

According to scientists at Pennsylvania State University, between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of the world’s languages will disappear over the next 100 years. They think this is terrible news. I’m not so sure.

According to the Bible, God realised that while all people spoke the same language, they would co-operate enough to build the Tower of Babel up to heaven and become as powerful as him. So, to keep them dumb and quarrelsome, he sent what we now call “diversity”.

Anybody who has tried to learn another language knows that diversity can be overrated, especially when it means you have to learn irregular verbs.

I genuinely believe we should celebrate different cultures and languages, but I admit, I’m choosy.

The languages most likely to perish over the next century will be ones spoken by a couple of hundred people.

The big hitters, like English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, aren’t going anywhere and to be honest, if everyone on Earth spoke one, two, or ideally all three of these, wouldn’t we get on with each other a whole lot better?

I’m mentioning English not because I think it’s “better” but because it’s a simple fact that our mother tongue is the world’s second language of choice.

It’s always worth studying another language – but let it be a useful one. I’m learning French (although the more I discover, the more I realise how much I mangle it) mainly because it gives me another 128 million people whom I can bore to death talking about Napoleon.

My husband, who speaks some Manx Gaelic, wants our son to learn Goidelic. If the kid agrees it’s fine by me, but let’s be brutal here, it won’t do him much good outside Scotland and Ireland, will it? And it’s useless for visiting warm, exotic places.

If my child’s second language is Gaelic, I’m going to insist on a more globally-beneficial third, like Spanish, which instantly opens up the sunniest country in Europe, almost all of South America and a fair chunk of the southern states of the US.

Also, as I understand it, with Spanish you get Italian almost-free. It’s practically a two-for-one offer.

In Norway, they have a typically inclusive, egalitarian attitude to language learning. Almost everybody there studies English to an advanced level. Logically and correctly, they reckon that since there are 380 million Anglophones, and only five million Norwegians, they can’t beat’em. So they join ‘em.

My main concerns are the sort of environmental changes that cause languages to become extinct. I’d rather we concentrate on saving people and the ecosystems that they are part of, and let the languages look after themselves.

Besides, we can still enjoy Latin texts, Ancient Greek myths, Viking sagas and suchlike, even if the languages they were written in have turned into others.

Nobody speaks Etruscan any more but hey, we got over it. As long as scholars can translate for us, all is not lost.

Diversity is fine, but I think I prefer unity and the things that bring us closer together. And perhaps before we’re down to just a handful of languages, someone will invent a Babel Fish as described in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or universal translator from TV series such as Star Trek. Then I’ll be free to choose a less worthy, but more fun, super power – like flying.