That make me wonder. I was once in Northern Texas at a local burger joint. I was unable to order. The clerk and I were unable to communicate. The regional language was just too removed from any English I had heard before.

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I've studied German and Russian. Knowing German grammar helped me to learn Russian.

Russian?
Hehe:) Blin. That's a blyatiful language.
If it not was because of the Cyrillic script that some monk in Bulgaria who invented letters from a mirror of Latin letters that is.
Russian have almost the same soothing sound like the language of Moomin Trolls:)

That make me wonder. I was once in Northern Texas at a local burger joint. I was unable to order. The clerk and I were unable to communicate. The regional language was just too removed from any English I had heard before.

My guess is that you met people that speak with a heavy dialect.
No wonder. The US is a big country.
Now is what you heard that a different language?
Well, according to scholars it is if some books have been written with it.
Even small countries like Sweden have problem with dialects.
For instance Skåne, the most southern part of Sweden.
Their pronunciation of Swedish and use of several words that are unfamilary to us Swedes is remarkable.

That make me wonder. I was once in Northern Texas at a local burger joint. I was unable to order. The clerk and I were unable to communicate. The regional language was just too removed from any English I had heard before.

Sounds like you were way up in the Pan-Handle region of North Texas... Amarillo maybe?

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Ave AndrewMarcio.
You mean that all of us should speak Latin?

Maybe.

I even wonder if the Romans themself spoke Latin.
However there are many good Latin quotes that we can use:)
https://www.yuni.com/library/latin.html

Did the Romans have translators?

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MYGA! MAKE YAWN GREAT AGAIN

The whole Bible was translated from Hebrew in Latin (the Seventy edition).
Tullio
Errata corrige: after consulting my Bibbia Concordata (Milano, Mondadori,1968) I learn that the Septuaginta version was written in Greek in Alexandria in the III Century before Christ, From this edition a Latin version, the Vulgata, was translated by San Girolamo in the IV Century.
Two paintings by Caravaggio show San Girolamo in the act of writing. One is in a church in La Valletta, Malta, the other in Galleria Borghese, Roma.

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Did the Romans have translators?

Of course they had.
How else could they govern their provinces and also trade with other countries?
And the Romans had explorers and historians like Tacitus.
He put Sweden on the map:)

Tacitus wrote the ethnographic "De origine et situ Germanorum" from the year 98, about different peoples commonly called Germans, and their culture is described.
Although the distance to the north was far, Tacitus's data in Germania has a serious character, what he writes seems to be true and objectively. There is no support for Tacitus himself to visit the area without the work being regarded as a secondary task. There is however, several scholars interpret his statements in different ways. Full agreement on reliability and interpretation is not available. In addition, there are different interpretations to translate the complex Latin that Tacitus wrote.
According to traditional interpretation, Sweden and its people are mentioned as suions, living on an island in the ocean "Suionum hinc civitates ipso in Oceano". In addition, Tacitus's presentation is not quite clear and gives room for several other interpretations.
Language historically, it is interesting that Tacitus compares with British, as regards Aestiorum (trad Estonias).

Anyway.
Some belive that an universal language is needed and therefore constructed a new language.
Ido. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido_language

Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo,
tua nomo santigesez;
tua regno advenez;
tua volo facesez
quale en la cielo, tale anke sur la tero.
Donez a ni cadie l'omnadiala pano,
e pardonez a ni nia ofensi,
quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti,
e ne duktez ni aden la tento,
ma liberigez ni del malajo.

Sounds very Spanish/Latin to me.
As of the year 2000, there were approximately 100–200 Ido speakers in the world.:)

There are many more Esperanto speakers. I receive the newsletter from the Italian Esperanto organization. But it is an artificial language I have suggested that the European Community adopt a simplified form of Latin as lingua franca, as Israel has done with Hebrew. After all Isaac Newton wrote in Latin his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica".
Tullio

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The Bible:)
Yes. It comes with MANY editions.
And with MANY interpretation errors over time.
The text is now useless if you ask me.
It's like now using Google Translate to read other languages that are not belonging to the Germanic language group.
And what is worse.
When doing a translation Google first translate the text to English.
THEN translating the english text to the language you ask for!
I read a lot of Russian texts and use Google but the result become jibberish if I do a Russian-Swedish translation.
Blin:)

After all Isaac Newton wrote in Latin his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica".
Tullio

So did Carl von Linné aka Carolus Linnæus:)

Once in San Cassiano ski resort a Swedish professor tried to engage me in a Latin conversation. I was used to written Latin but never spoke it. So I was not very brilliant.
Tullio

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Did the Romans have translators?

Of course they had.
How else could they govern their provinces and also trade with other countries?
And the Romans had explorers and historians like Tacitus.
He put Sweden on the map:)

Tacitus wrote the ethnographic "De origine et situ Germanorum" from the year 98, about different peoples commonly called Germans, and their culture is described.
Although the distance to the north was far, Tacitus's data in Germania has a serious character, what he writes seems to be true and objectively. There is no support for Tacitus himself to visit the area without the work being regarded as a secondary task. There is however, several scholars interpret his statements in different ways. Full agreement on reliability and interpretation is not available. In addition, there are different interpretations to translate the complex Latin that Tacitus wrote.
According to traditional interpretation, Sweden and its people are mentioned as suions, living on an island in the ocean "Suionum hinc civitates ipso in Oceano". In addition, Tacitus's presentation is not quite clear and gives room for several other interpretations.
Language historically, it is interesting that Tacitus compares with British, as regards Aestiorum (trad Estonias).

Anyway.
Some belive that an universal language is needed and therefore constructed a new language.
Ido. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido_language

Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo,
tua nomo santigesez;
tua regno advenez;
tua volo facesez
quale en la cielo, tale anke sur la tero.
Donez a ni cadie l'omnadiala pano,
e pardonez a ni nia ofensi,
quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti,
e ne duktez ni aden la tento,
ma liberigez ni del malajo.

Sounds very Spanish/Latin to me.
As of the year 2000, there were approximately 100–200 Ido speakers in the world.:)

Ido, the future language of Asgardia

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MYGA! MAKE YAWN GREAT AGAIN

Once in San Cassiano ski resort a Swedish professor tried to engage me in a Latin conversation. I was used to written Latin but never spoke it. So I was not very brilliant.
Tullio

Hehe:)
There are not many that speak Latin today.
One exeption. The Vatican State.
I saw a TV show about astronomy and where they have the Vatican Observatory.
http://www.vaticanobservatory.va/content/specolavaticana/en.html
One of the managers is apparently from America and he spoke Latin with an American accent.
Why he spoke Latin? I don't remember but it was very funny nevertheless :)
Or perhaps it was some other guy who spoke Latin... Whatever.
Been there and the Pontifical Swiss Guard didn't ask for your passport.

Ido, the future language of Asgardia

Ah. Yes. Our Nordic languages are the best.
Millions of people speak that.
Easy to spell and not so much fancy Latin grammar as in English.
Some umlauts in the alphabet but that's because that facilitate spelling.
England adopted the French spelling rules instead:(
Beefeaters!

Ido, the future language of Asgardia

Ah. Yes. Our Nordic languages are the best.
Millions of people speak that.
Easy to spell and not so much fancy Latin grammar as in English.
Some umlauts in the alphabet but that's because that facilitate spelling.
England adopted the French spelling rules instead:(
Beefeaters!

btw. Funny that it is Russians who have came up with the idea.
Or is it? Long story....

While the concept of developing a universal language sounds attractive there are many practical difficulties in doing so.
First are the massive cultural issues associated with tonal vs. atonal. In recent years I've spent some time working in China where a lot of words which sound the same to our years have very diferent meanings depending on their tonal delivery (high pitch, low pitch, rising pitch, falling pitch etc.), likewise they can't discriminate many of our vowel sounds. One can imagine the confussion this causes...
Then there is the shear number of people that would need to be re-educated to use the new, artificial, languauge.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Never cracked a pun, until I learned German. Now, just read der Spiegel.
The only non-English languages spoken, here, in town, are Spanish, Korean,, and Mandarin .

A universal language would be nice. But I'm wanting a universal translator like in Star Trek. A little piece of micro tech placed in your ear.

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Well in the EU parliament and the UN Assembly Hall they already have a device like that.
Sort of:) It's connected to a human that simultaneous interpret a speech to an other language.
Truly amazing. (reminds me of a movie btw...)
A universal translator like in Star Trek is perhaps not so far away.
However as always it would most likely be based on English.
After all English has become "lingua de facto". Ops. Latin:)
We other have to wait longer. Some very long and many languages have to wait forever.
There are between 6000 and 7000 languages in the world - spoken by 7 billion people divided into 189 independent states.
https://edl.ecml.at/LanguageFun/LanguageFacts/tabid/1859/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Interesting that Swedes and Americans discuss details of the Norwegian language and the fact that we have 2 written variants: Bokmål and Nynorsk.
The 2 written variants are mutually understandable (apart from a few odd words), but still elementary and high schools pupils are obliged to learn both variants. They consequently waste time that would otherwise be well spent learning more useful subjects (eg: technology or science), or even learning that Norway in fact has a 3rd official language: Sami. Sami is of the Finnish-Ugrian language family and thus totally different from Bokmål/Nynorsk.

Norwegian (bokmål & nynorsk) is of Germanic origin, closely related to both Danish and Swedish, and mutually understandable with both.
The 2 variants of Norwegian are formally equal in legislation and education, but presently the bokmål variant dominates quantitatively among pupils, mainly because of its preferred position in the densly populated capital area (+ most other major cities). About 10-12% of the pupils study nynorsk as their 1st language (hovedmål). All pupils then have to study the other variant as their 2nd language (sidemål).
The nynorsk core areas are rural western Norway (fjord & fjell) with towns and villages, plus certain mountain communities east of the east-west geographical divide.

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