Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives…

  1. English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English (1%2C452 million speakers)&text=According to Ethnologue%2C English is,native and non-native speakers.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
    0·
    7 months ago

    I would say there is. Body language. Just about any human you meet can understand body language.

    • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      I suppose, though very poorly in comparison to what we usually mean by language. This sparks an interesting question though: can two human strangers communicate with each other better than any other animals can, even when those two people have no language in common?

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
        0·
        7 months ago

        I would argue yes, but not by a massive degree in my opinion. Every animal has body language and several things are shared amongst many of us, especially mammals. But yeah, I think our whole species would understand things like pointing at something or laughing or offering something with an outstretched arm, or a surprised face or a scowl.