Auxiliary Language
I have heard the comment many times that Baha’is seem to be bilingual. After reflecting for a bit, I came to realize that most of the Baha’is I know have, at minimum, a basic working knowledge of at least one other language than their native tongue. One of the basic beliefs and missions of the Baha’is is to establish a Universal Auxiliary Language that can be used all over the world for education and business.
“In order to facilitate complete understanding between all people, a universal auxiliary language will be adopted and in the schools of the future two languages will be taught — the mother tongue and this international auxiliary tongue.” (quoting Baha’u’llah)
~ Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 84
This would mean that all people of the could communicate with each other. Baha’i doctrine does not mandate which language should be used for this purpose, though there is praise for Esperanto as it attempts to mix vocabulary and grammatical structures from several different languages. In modern times, it would appear that English is becoming the de facto standard as an international language.
The concept of learning to speak in multiple languages is commonplace in many parts of the world—except the United States. As an educator I am fascinated not just with how people learn different languages, but how multilingualism can help us to understand each other not just on the personal, but on the metaphysical one as well.
I've got nothing against English. Indeed, I'm privileged to have it as my mother tongue. I also speak Esperanto, and have used it on my travels, most recently in Cameroon.
Readers of your blog might want to look at http://www.esperanto,net
Can I add my support to Esperanto, rather than English as the future global language?
Further information can be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-88374389... A glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net