Why Are We Speaking in The Same Language?

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I think not many people appreciate how impressive lingua francas are anymore. The old-fashioned way back then (at least, for aristocrats) was to accumulate languages like Pokémon. But probably not the common people. Naturally, countries like the United States, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, filled with so many different ethnicities, must’ve been inconceivable for someone back then. How can such a country even talk to one another?

I mean, now, the answer must’ve been obvious: a unifying language, a lingua franca.

Though, even without it, we live in a globalised society with Google Translate. Now, diversity and multiple languages are as common as peanut butter. I am a native Indonesian, very far from England, typing in English for a website read by even more language natives who could use English to understand my points. Isn’t that awesome?

I’d like to reflect a bit on my own language, Bahasa Indonesia, as a lingua franca. I mean, for starters, without it, the existence of Indonesia itself used to seem so improbable. Three hundred-plus different ethnicities (suku) speaking their languages don’t make a good recipe for a nation. But Indonesia itself was commonly understood to have originated from the Youth Pledge in 1928, where…