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[r3d5kull]

Heh, sure thing.

Are you kidding me?

[Dwarf]

No, sorry. It wans't meant to be sarcastic, although it turned out that way.

[Neruz]

The Chinese do indeed have around 4000 years of documented history. What's really impressive is that the language has stayed so similar that a modern Chinese can actually read ancient Chinese.

[Sordid]

Has it? I don't know much about China, but I was under the impression the local dialects are so different from each other that they're more like full-fledged languages unto themselves, and people from different parts of China can't understand each other even today. The idea that they might be able to read ancient texts with no special knowledge of the old language seems highly suspect to me.

[Neruz]

Has it? I don't know much about China, but I was under the impression the local dialects are so different from each other that they're more like full-fledged languages unto themselves, and people from different parts of China can't understand each other even today. The idea that they might be able to read ancient texts with no special knowledge of the old language seems highly suspect to me.

Not sure about the spoken language, but Mandarin as written has changed very little over the milennia, mostly having new words added to it.

The thing about modern Chinese being able to read ancient Mandarin without all that much difficulty comes from my father, who lived in Taiwan for awhile and often went to China for buisness, he said that one of his colleagues in China took him to a history meuseum when he was there at one point and he was amazed to discover his colleague could read most of the ancient mandarin.

[Sordid]

Hm, anecdotal. Aaaaand I don't really care enough to look into it further.

[Aqizzar]

The thing about modern Chinese being able to read ancient Mandarin without all that much difficulty comes from my father, who lived in Taiwan for awhile and often went to China for buisness, he said that one of his colleagues in China took him to a history meuseum when he was there at one point and he was amazed to discover his colleague could read most of the ancient mandarin.

How much you wanna bet he was just making stuff up, or reading the (modern Mandarin) display plaque with a translation?

[Jackrabbit]

The Chinese do indeed have around 4000 years of documented history. What's really impressive is that the language has stayed so similar that a modern Chinese can actually read ancient Chinese.

You know the original chinese character for 'man' was a drawing of a man?

It's gotten more complicated as time goes on (then a bit less complicated).

[Neruz]

The Chinese do indeed have around 4000 years of documented history. What's really impressive is that the language has stayed so similar that a modern Chinese can actually read ancient Chinese.

You know the original chinese character for 'man' was a drawing of a man?

It's gotten more complicated as time goes on (then a bit less complicated).

Oh yeah, i'm not saying there's been no change at all, rather that the languages are sufficiently similar that they're still readable even today.

Changes have occured, and it's not fluent, but the fact that it's readable at all is pretty impressive. Mind you, China went through it's "Everyone trying to kill everyone else" stage much earlier than Europe did (and Europe went through it twice), so given the circumstances it's not that amazing. The circumstances are pretty impressive though.

[Ampersand]

That's not really so interesting. A modern Italian, given a Latin text, can probably understand a good deal of the meaning, even if specifically they don't know Latin grammar.

Hell, some Latin is pretty easy to guess the meaning of for even English speakers. The principle is the same.

[r3d5kull]

Speaking of Latin why don't we just use Latin as all of our languages... I mean how many languages have Latin roots?

[Ampersand]

More than I care to list. Basically, all of Western Europe and it's relevant colonies have latin roots, exceptions being Germany, The Netherlands, and England. English has latin roots, but mostly just by way of the Norman invasion in 1066, not due to Roman influence. Mostly.

Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and other British Isles languages are completely unrelated to Latin.

Of course, the most widely spoken language across the globe outside of Mandarin Chinese is Spanish, and it of course has heavy latin influence.

As for why we don't all just start speaking latin; Latin is very much like french. Lots of rules, with lots of exceptions to those rules. Lots of history between the last time anyone spoke latin. The fact that the latin you read in latin text books or historical texts is not a kind of latin that anyone really spoke is also an important point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Latin This is what they teach in High Schools and Colleges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin This is what most Latin speakers in Antiquity actually spoke, and what eventually transformed into modern Italian.

In addition, looking at the spread of regional dialects across Italy shows that even Modern Italian isn't really what is spoken everywhere in Italy. We in America have it easy, there's really only two languages worth knowing to communicate effectively; Spanish and English. This is because there was never really a point in United States History where populations lived in any real kind of isolation, without any communication beyond their region. We've only had 234 years, after all, and for most of that time, we've had means of rapid transportation.

In Europe, the situation is far more complex. Language across a single nation can vary wildly, and people need to learn many different languages just to get through life without looking like an idiot.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Italy_-_Forms_of_Dialect.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Langues_de_la_France1.gif
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Continental_West_Germanic_languages.png

The above just manages to scratch the surface. All of these have deep historical roots, and no one wants to give up something they grew up with.

Latin is not an ideal language anyway. The closest to an ideal that anyone has created is probably Esperanto, just due to it's simplicity and easy to learn linguistic rules with no exceptions.

[Cthulhu]

Also because teaching latin to everyone in the world is kind of a logistics problem.

[r3d5kull]

Very Interesting, I shall rethink my view point. Thanks for sharing!

[Dwarf]

On a related not:
Esperanto would probably be better for the international super-language.
It's very easy if you already speak a germanic or romance language.

Also, I hate romance languages. They're so... noble sounding, and Italian just plain ridiculous.
Germanic languages ftw.