[edinohio]

Well I don't know where to start becuase I feel I could talk for hours about this matter, however I'll try to stick to the most important points.
On the existence of one universal language
I love languages and english is one of my favourite ones and to me it does sound beautiful (well depending on who's speaking it) but I do believe that having different languages is beautiful and knowing how to speak several of them is simply fascinating so it preserves the beauty of human nature. I mean, I am sure you speak more than one and don't you just feel that some languages are better when expressing certain ideas than others? Sometimes it's difficult for me to stick to one language when I feel another one expresses something much more precisely. And on top of this, are we prepared to have one language? I am possitive we weren't in the past, I mean they tried to keep latin as the official language, but people were actually talking something else and only an elite were able to write and speak latin. I know that this happened before mass communication and globalization but look at what happens today with arabic!!! It is forbidden to write in syrian or marrocan or egypcian, but the majority of the population of the arab world can't speak nor write "proper" arabic. Shouldn't they just be allowed to have their own language?, as far as I know lebanese people can't communicate with marrocans anyway, simply because they don't understand each other. So even if some of us are prepared to accept one language, is it going to work for everybody? will it ever work?
On the evolution of languages
OK Everybody agrees that languages change and that it is the way it has always been. Words are borrowed from one language to the other, they travel and come back and borders become blurry. However, should we allow languages to drift completely free? Don't misunderstand me, I am not a purist, but just to preserve the beauty of languages I wouldn't agree with an uncontrolled drift. For instance, do you agree with what's going on in the U.S. with the spanglish phenomenom? I think it's just a slaughter of both languages. I agree with borrowing from another language when this foreign language offers a more elegant solution to a problem, but not when it adds just meaningless redundancy. Spanish has a latin word for carpet (tapete), an arabic word for it (alfombra) why add "carpeta" as another option ?(I've heard it, and it's just terrible), moreover the word "carpeta" means something else in spanish. So, even though the english language is becoming international in that nobody owns it, are you ready to accept all the changes that the different "english" speakers will bring with them? If we don't unify, spelling, pronunciation and grammar, this international english might again evolve to several different languages.
On the level of difficulty
I couldn't agree more with the fact that english is easy to learn and with simple structures that make it acceptable by the majority. However I am sure that you agree that it's pronunciation is really messed up. Wouldn't it be easier to standardise a phonetic language?

I don't have the answers to any of the questions that I've asked, and sometimes I don't even have a strong opinion on many of these issues (other than those clearly expressed here) but they're just things that I think of and I wanted to share them with you Jamshid and with the rest of you as well.
Cheers
Ed