Communication

• Offended by the Tower of Babel, God confounded language, complicating human communication.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  To punish humans for trying to build a tower to heaven, God fragmented their language into separate tongues, according to the book of Genesis in the Bible. Adopting a single, international tongue would enable people to restore the pristine condition of easy verbal communication which, according to some religions, existed at the birth of humankind.
  
  

Education

• Worldwide, millions of students spend many hours endeavoring to learn second languages.Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
  
  Unless you acquire a second language before the age of 7 or 8, the chances are that learning one will demand substantial time and effort and, despite all your practice, never leave you without an accent, observes psychologist David G. Myers. By making second languages less necessary for international communication, the widespread use of a single, international tongue would reduce educational costs.
  
  

International Peace

• Possibly, war would occur less often if everyone spoke the same language.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  The extent to which facilitating verbal communication fosters peace may be debated. After all, hostilities do flare up between groups of the same language: Serbs and Croats (1990s); Tutsis and Hutus (1994); Northerners and Southerners in the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). Nonetheless, proponents of international languages have often pointed to world peace as the greatest value an international language would promote, notes linguist Arika Okrent.
  
  

No Loyalty

• No international language could replace the mother tongue for spontaneous, heartfelt expression.Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
  
  Despite its promised advantages, no international language has ever won the hearts of many people. As Okrent points out, humans develop deeply personal and passionate ties to their mother tongues. Even if equally capable of conveying thoughts, international languages have failed time and again to inspire that same degree of loyalty.
  
  

Need for Inducements

• Rising into the upper crust may depend on speaking the "right" language.Jupiterimages/Goodshoot/Getty Images
  
  As babies, people pick up their mother tongues without even thinking about it, observes linguist Steven Pinker. Those who bother to learn a second language, however, usually do so for external rewards. It is on those rewards that the popularity of the second language depends. As Okrent notes, due to the strength and prosperity both of the British Empire and of the United States, English came to appeal to millions around the world as a means to better living conditions, greater wealth, status and power. Without such inducements, no international language is likely to stir much interest.
  
  

Lost Beauty

• Literary treasures may be lost if languages are allowed to die.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Ironically, if an international language were to win widespread acceptance and, as a result, start to realize its promised advantages, it might pose another kind of disadvantage. It might press native tongues into disuse, allowing literary treasures, currently embodied in those languages, to fall into oblivion. Translating literature of the past into the new international language would, of course, be possible. But, as writer and translator Vladimir Nabokov suggests, something of beauty is always lost in the translation.