YES,we are discussing about our mother tongue.I think I have the right to imagine the future need of chinese language! I didnt metion that you must use Chinese as the first language,but imagined that Chinese will be the important communicating tool as most countries regard China as producing base.In my opinion,the universal language means that there will be many many ppl use it ,not means that except it,the other languages will disappear on the world.Can you understand my english?
Hi Kiri. You say that a language becomes universal if it is spoken by many people. If that were true then Chinese and Hindi would be more universal than English. I think there are more things that make a language universal. English is so popular because it is the language of technology, science, marketing and entertainment. Of course the economy in China is growing faster than many other countries. But does this mean that the Chinese language will spread throughout the world? The question is how many inventions are made in China? How many Chinese movies and TV shows are broadcast in other countries? How many books are printed in China and translated into other languages?
ok,i am afraid i have misunderstood the meaning of “universal language”.so sorry for my poor english.
I just want to say that more and more ppl are beginning to learn chinese.That’s all.
Hello Kiri. I agree with you. China’s population is growing fast and there are already more than 1 billion peole who speak Chinese as their mother tongue. There are certainly people who learn Chinese as a second language because now many western companies are investing lots of money in China and it’s important that you speak the language well and understand the culture.
Do you remember the attempts of creating a universal language that would be spoken all around the world? The most popular of those tries certainly was Esperanto. To my knowledge esperanto has never really spread as far as its inventors had hoped. Instead English is used as the universal means of international communication. At the same time more and more people are also other languages like Spanish, Chinese, French and Arabic. I can’t see a conflict here. On the contrary. I think with the spread of English as a universal language people are becoming more aware of how important it is to speak more than just one language. You can learn several languages as long as you are ready and willing to learn.
Yes now that the Olympic Games of 2012 will be held in London the world will start learning English when they are fininished with Chinese. Just a joke - no offence intended. 
I’ve also heard about Esperanto and although the idea of a universal language might be good I think Esperanto is too artificial. I think a language can only develop if there are a sufficient number of native speakers. Now, who speaks Esperanto as their mother tongue?
Hardly anyone… :roll:
Hehe… Esperanto 
No, I don’t speak that one.
But I speak Dari and Greek as my mother tongues. And I don’t think that any one of these two might become a universal language - hihi.
Hi Sunny,
Is Dari similar to Farsi? Is it a version of Arabic or different? Why do you speak so many languages?
Yes, Andreana, Dari is related to Farsi and it is spoken in Afghanistan.
My mother comes from Afghanistan, my father comes from Greece and we live in Germany 
My guess is: French 
Sascha Hello! Your guess was almost correct. My mother tongue has the same roots like French. A lot of our vocabulary is French based and we use some French words (often without knowing it of course). I’m sure you speak this language too .
English? :roll:
Don`t know why, but English has a lot of words derived from French… Am I right?
Are you saying your mother tongue is German? Then count again, in how many countries German is spoken :lol:
I count 6.
Hello Karina! You are right a lot of English and French words have the same roots. But I think French is older than English so it’s that a lot English words derived from French rather than the other way round. Regarding the number of speakers - there a lot more than 100 million people in the world than just 100. In North America alone there are how many - three hundred million?
Sacha, what would those 6 countries be?
Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Italy (and if you want, Luxembourg also)
Hello Sascha, how many people speak German in Italy? It’s think it’s a very small number. There might be more people in Switzerland speaking Italian that German speakers in Italy.
Hello everybody
There are about 50 million people in the world speak
My mother tongue
Those speak my mother tongue live in 5 countries and some live in europe and America because they emigrated and settled there
I know that nobody here in this forum knows at least one word of my mother tongue
and I know nobody will guess what is my mother tongue
If you guess that mean you are genius 