How Language Affects the Development of a Country

John Lo
Language Insights
Published in
2 min readAug 26, 2018

The usage of languages, be it a single one or multiple ones, shapes how a country is developed.

Country development with multiple languages

Multiple languages provide language diversity, and thus diversity of thoughts, which promotes innovation and is thus beneficial for the development.

Moreover, having multiple languages often mean sharing common ones with other countries, favouring the interactions for mutual interests between them, which is beneficial for the development of the countries.

However, different languages create language barriers in the country, which hinders communication of thoughts, not favouring the incubation of insights and thus the development of the country.

Country development with a single language

All languages have the same functionality, and thus equal complexity, as we have the same cognitive ability with our brain.

The way the language spoken in a country affect the technological development is access of information.

If the language spoken is universal for professionals in the country, sharing of ideas is promoted, which facilitates incubation of technological solutions. Moreover, if the language spoken is mutually intelligible with other countries, exchange of technological achievements between them will be more favourable. In these two ways, the language spoken in a country speeds up the technological development.

Conclusion

The development of a country is dependent on the usage of language, which can be dependent on external factors like geographical location and diplomatic relations, so there are not much rooms to boost country development by altering the usage of languages.

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