What a quaint idea that Englishmen speak the language of Shakespeare (1564-1616) or that the French speak as Molière (1622-1773)! Happily, there have been some advances in the languages since then. We don't want to fall in a rut, now, do we?
What a good idea to establish an English-speaking chain, although I see that in the other languages, there are not many participants.
2000 years ago, many civilised people thought that Latin was the universal language. Now there is a tendancy to say that Latin is a dead language, so please be careful what you say about English if you want it to survive.

Latin is not dead!  But for several people it seemed to a "pretentious" language because it showed the differences between the intellectual and the others (XVI century and after...)
I'm happy to see this topic here, and I hope there'll have many participants than in the others. I think that this language is the easiest to write although I prefer German

I wonder how to translate 'Machine-gun' into latin?
A universal language can only be one that is available to and spoken by everybody!
I think it would be  better to choose a completely new language for this purpose, in order to avoid jealousy; however, Esperanto has not really taken off as the universal languague of the 20th Century. This is rather a pity.

I agree with you.. Latin, english, and other languages can't be universal languages (even if english is considered to ...)because they don't represent the whole culture of the world : but just the one of a larger country than the others... But why would there be a universal language? i'm against people who speak english abroad although they could speak in the language of the country..

In that case, I will have to stop speaking English here!

I think it's good to have a "universal" language because it allows people to communicate even if they don't come from the same country...
If I don't know how to manage in english I would certainly never met some person with whom I'm still in touch now...
It could be good in a society in which a lot of people suffer from a lack of communication...

Dernière modification par Hadjer (20/10/2007 23:11)

JSC, we can like a language without the "will of universality". I like to learn some languages by thirsty of knowledge about another cultures and countries, that's why I think that each country must keep its own language to keep its own culture! I speak english for the english and american culture, not for the universality! But I can conceive that English and other popular languages aren't useless for the universal communication

Have you ever travelled to English-speaking countries?

As far as I'm concerned, I went to Scotland last year...