Marani, an Italian translator working at EU headquarters in Brussels, looks forward to the day when "Todos les citoyens of Europa werden fluently hablar Europanto." Indeed, it's quite possible this hybrid language could catch on--for a start, there are no grammar rules to worry about. To speak Europanto, learners need a basic knowledge of English and some familiarity with the Romance languages and German. What a boon for those of us who have studied languages without gaining fluency in any of them!

Even more attractive is the opportunity to mix in as much of your native language as you want. So "Europanto est una lingua viva, die ein little plus italiano sounds, se verra talked von un italiano, et ein bisschen plus deutsche, wenn a Deutscher la parla."

This sounds familiar to those of us familiar with Franglais and, here in the States, Spanglish. Just mix and match two or more languages and what do you get? A living language with no set rules, commonly dismissed by language experts as a "jazz" language. Marani is not alone in is his desire to create a universal language. Eurolang is touted as the "language you learn in a weekend." Spanish, French, Italian, and English form its base. Rules of grammar do exist in Eurolang (unlike the freewheeling Europanto) but they can be summed up on a page. Other pioneers offer alternative brave new languages including "conlangs" (constructed languages) and "auxlangs" (auxiliary languages).

Of course, none of these attempts at language creation are new. Between 1880 and 1907, notes author Bill Bryson in his book Mother Tongue, no less than 53 universal languages were proposed--perhaps it's a fin-de-siecle phenomenon. Esperanto, dating back to 1887, is still considered to be the most successful of artificial languages with an estimated one million speakers worldwide.

Others, including the delightfully named Volapuk, have fared less well. In more recent times, those familiar with the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange (memorably brought to the screen by the late Stanley Kubrick) will recall Alex and his "droogs" speaking a language called "Nadsat"--a potent mixture of slang-ridden English, Russian, Romany, French, Malay, and Dutch.

Despite all these proposed innovations, language teachers need not fear pink slips falling like snowflakes in the halls of academe. In fact, hybrid and artificial languages require speakers to be multilingual. And we all say a universal "hurrah" to that! We look forward to attending the 2999 TKSOL (Teachers of Klingon to Speakers of Other Languages) Conference confident that Woody Allen's Sleeper will become a reality for all of us.

Ben Ward, Editor