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Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by arockwell on Sunday December 21, 2008 @10:07PM (#406013)
A better question is why doesn't everyone in the world speak Esparanto.
Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by vaksel on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:22AM (#406156)
Because it has to complete with English which is already a world language(at least in the business world)
Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by jey on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:50PM (#406603)
Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by tokenadult on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:41AM (#406132)
There is an answer to that question:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

Esperanto is not particularly easy to learn, despite the claims of its founder, so learners devote their time and effort to learning languages with much more return on investment once the language is learned.

Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by mooism2 on Monday December 22, 2008 @05:08AM (#406257)
Or even, why isn't every language written using the latin alphabet?

To which an answer might be, latin doesn't support certain sounds, can't represent tones... and if it did, it would break chinese language interoperability.

Re:Ask HN: Can someone explain to me why all languages don't... by jgranby on Monday December 22, 2008 @11:44AM (#406520)
Analogy with human languages isn't ideal, because they have almost all grown up organically, whereas programming languages are, to a large extent, designed. The reason that every language doesn't use the Latin alphabet is, amongst others, geographic -- so many others grew up in isolation from the West, they'd never come across that alphabet before. The same isn't really true of programming languages.