Premise
In this world, there is a global government that is all-powerful. However, what makes this world interesting is the type of government structure of the global government. It is not a junta, democracy, or a theocracy. One could argue this world government is a scientocracy, but it's a very specific field of science that they base their decisions around -- Philology. I had to double check the meaning, and I will include it here for reference:
Philology: the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages.
Now, I will coin a word to explain the central government of this world:
Philologocracy: A form of governance whereby all decisions revolve around preserving the existing linguistic heritage of the world.
For example, this Philologocracy would deeply frown upon a language group with less than 1,000 native speakers. It would promptly issue policies to increase the adoption and revival of the language. That's the basic idea, but of course the devil might be in the details. The other part of the Philologocracy definition I want to explain is the emphasis on existing linguistic heritage. This means the central government is off the hook for languages that are already dead, but they could of course be studied as a hobby. So in short, the Philologocracy's mission is to not let any existing language die out.
This world has a specific type of Philologocracy, an egalitarian Philologocracy. In this form of government all languages must have EQUAL populations of native speakers. This spells doom for our big languages like: English, Chinese, Spanish and so forth. At the same time, this is an unexpected miracle for anyone with a soft spot for tiny language groups. For instance, Chinese speakers shouldn't outnumber an African tribe language like Maasai. Approximately all 6,700+ languages must have equally sized populations of native speakers.
Question: How can the Philologocracy take our world, which seems to have formed from a mix of political, military and economic influences to a world that has a balanced population size for each existing language in the world? I'm just looking for a general overall strategy. To keep the scope within reason, consider these objectives:
Objectives:
- Increase birth rate of endangered language populations
- Ensure adoption of endangered language, that it may be "revived"
- Impose a form of punishment for not speaking the endangered language (note: the death penalty might not work here since the Philologocracy may not have the guts to follow through executing the precious remaining native speakers)
- Reduce birth rate of large language groups
Success Metric: All existing languages have equally sized populations of native speakers
Further Clarifications:
- Assume total passivity of the citizens of this world (whatever the central government says goes)
- Assume the world the Philologocracy inherits is the real world of today
- Ethnic heritage is preferred, but external groups may be added as needed for the case of a truly tiny language where undue inbreeding is a risk.
Territory can be re-allocated as necessary to support the new landscape of the world. Each language group should have enough land to have reasonable autonomy.
Radical redrawing of boundaries is allowed.
Dialects can count as a language if they are different enough. To make it simple consider the line in the sand to be mutually intelligibility. For instance, Cantonese and Mandarin would make the cut, but Farsi and Dari would not. When choosing which to keep, choose the older one. If it is uncertain which is older, think of a clever political maneuver to justify one over the other.
- Language must have existed in the past. The Philologocracy will not accept a language that was made up yesterday.
- Fictional languages are not in consideration either. They can continue to exist in the movies, but there won't be any real life Kling'On states.
- A group of people can only speak one native language, and are limited to being able to speak 2 other languages, but only at proficient level.