Do you all think that it's a worthwhile endeavour to attempt to revive more dead languages in the same way that Hebrew was revived? Is it possible to adequately revitalize it, turning it into a practical language while retaining the old flavour?

I suggest of reviving a dead language for use in science. I would suggest either Latin, Greek or Sanskrit. They were already used for the same purpose once and so have a rich vocabulary of adequate terms.

I suppose the Vatican has tried that to some extent with Latin (though they aren't using Classical latin ). My understanding was that Sanskrit isn't completely dead. My paternal grandfather (native of India) was near fluent in it. What would be the scientific merit of such revival?

It would be fun but I don't see the point unless they seem cultural needs and the need for a lingua franca like in the case of Israel and Hebrew exist again.

Latin has actually been proposed as lingua franca for the European Union.

I don't see why we would adopt Latin as a lingua franca - no one speaks Latin apart from the people that study something related to history or something of the sort! Surely the majority of people in Europe can't undestand Latin, including myself.

philly_boy, that's actually the whole point. These people want a neutral language that no one speaks as their first so that no one has the 'mother tongue advantage'. As you've probably already realized this would inconvenience a lot of people and cost a lot the re-educate everyone in the new language.

I thought just occured to me and, while I haven't looked into this, I think Latin may be more ideal than most people think. Many are against Esperonto to become a lingua frana because it is biased towards speakers of romance languages. This thing is with Latin, learners whose first language is a romance language will have an advantage with vocabulary but speakers of slavik and germanic languages will have less trouble with the case system. This seems to overcome at least part of the biased lingua franca idea.

I, however, do not believe that imposing a lingua franca will work, although if it can be done I'm not against it. I find that, when examining history, a lingua franca will arise out of need and over time, not from the wishful efforts of a group of people.

Stosis, I still think that Romance speakers would be favored in a Latin system. Sure, other languages have the advantage of case system familiarity, but it's not a hard thing to learn (I say this as a Latin student after 6 years in the languages...though without much success at fluent writing, only reading, let alone speaking). So, the vocabulary advantage is bigger, I say.

I think the whole universal lingua franca thing is stupid. There's a reason ther are as many langauges as there, after all. Why try to work against it?

However what about the people who don't speak romance languages? I am Greek, my language isnt based on Latin, therefore I would need to learn a new language to communicate. I think that the best solution would be a language that is spoken by most people in Europe.