>Yesterday, I've seen a section in the library I haven't spotted before: "international languages". First I thought it's very funny, then that they must mean esperanto et al, but then, hey, there are languages which are shared by a few nations... pretty much the former colonial languages; those do qualify as internatinal. And Latin, spoken by no nation, but international all the same. But I think they goofed on Russian and Japanese: which other nations speak these languages? These are the national languages of Russia and Japan.

Latin would also be the language of a former colonial or imperialistic power - considering that the Romans conquered much of the World known at that time.

Another example of an international language, now spoken in several countries, is Quechua. I understand that its widespread use is also due to the fact that it was once used or imposed by an imperialistic power (the Inka empire).

I would suspect that many other countries that are currently wide-spread have a similar origin - one tribe imposing its language upon other tribes.