Jett,
Sì sì, oc oc, once upon a time there was a Universal Language, every educated person read it, most wrote and spoke it. It lasted 2 millennia, indeed, it gave us the word 'millennium' and its exotic plural.
Every educated person, I mean to say, who wasn't educated in China, India, practically all of Asia, all of Australia and Antarctica, all but the top fringe of Africa, not to mention North, Central, and South America. And associated islands.
As Latin faded into a sort of indistinct, dusky afterlife with tantalising glimmers of stunning eroticism and braininess, Esperanto came into being to take its place. Esperanto: 66% Latin, 33% Anglo-sassone.
It was obvious to its inventor that the Brits and Austrians and Hessians, the French and Spaniards, and, magari, Italy and Romania, would forever rule the world.
It is not obvious to me that that is likely to be the case bimeby.
O just beat me over the head with Milo, I'm so veddy veddy pc.
And yet, the only reason, me seemeth, that Chinese will not become the lingua franca soonishly, is that it is way too difficult to learn. At least Hindi is Indo-European. Linguists know the tricks to devolve the modern words back to their roots, and then evolve them forward into a cousin modern language.
Pace Captain Fantastic, a lingua uniuersalis must be as accessible to a Quechua or Maori as it is to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. Moreover a lingua uniuersalis must be as intelligible to Seth, aka my pc, as it would be to Baudolino (compulsive Umberto Eco allusion, je suis désolé).
On the path to Ietspik . . . .--Giac
