One possibility for the future is that some highly logical language like lojban will be employed by computer systems like "google translate." (Actually GT presently is unaware of lojban's existence.) See, if the developers of such systems had brains, then they would proceed by the "gcc principle" -- translating language X into a canonical form (such as lojban) then translate to language Y. The work to build N languages into the system would then be 2N. As opposed to the bad design of translating X to Y, which would be (N-1)*N work to build it -- much larger. This also would aid human-computer communication -- the computer could hope to understand what a human lojban speaker is saying, whereas that is very difficult for English and simply is not going to happen anytime soon. Investigating... Wikipedia claims "Nick Nicholas, an Australian linguist, was the first fluent Lojban speaker." A December 1996 web post claimed at that time he was the only one in the world. Lojban was developed during 1987-1997 (building on "loglan" invented 1955). The definition of Lojban was published in a book then frozen during 1997-2002. As of 2013 there are probably fewer than 100 fluent Lojban speakers and perhaps 1000 non-fluent ones. NN wrote book "Lojban For Beginners" coauthored by Robin Turner. Online book by him & Jack Cowan: http://www.academia.edu/1278376/What_Is_Lojban QUOTES: "Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers... Lojban has an unambiguous grammar. Lojban has phonetic spelling, and sounds can be divided into words in only one way. Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn. Lojban’s 1350 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words. Lojban is regular; the rules of the language don’t have exceptions. Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication." "There are also linguists interested in Lojban’s potential as an intermediate language in computer-aided translation of natural languages; and Lojban is of interest as a potential stepping-stone for students learning other languages." "Because there are no idioms to shorten expressions, a Lojban text can be longer than the corresponding colloquial English text. The unambiguous linguistic structures that result are a major benefit that makes this worthwhile" (That last does not sound good. Really vocabulary in both human and computer languages should be designed according to principles of the Huffman code; more-used words and expressions being shorter...) "Lojban is actually much simpler than natural languages. It is only slightly more complex in its grammar than the current generation of computer languages (such as C++ and Perl)" "Because Lojban’s grammar is simple, it is easier to learn than other languages. Using flashcard-like techniques, a working vocabulary including the complete set of 1350 root words can take 8-12 weeks of study at 1 hour per day. It is by no means uncommon for people who embark on learning Lojban to be able to write grammatical Lojban within a few days, and to hold at least a limited conversation within a few weeks. Natural languages, especially English, take several years to learn to a comparable level of skill." "Lojban has an unambiguous grammar (proven by computer analysis of a formal grammar), pronunciation, and morphology (word forms). In practice this means that the person who reads or hears a Lojban sentence is never in doubt as to what words it contains or what roles they play in the sentence." "Lojban is culturally fully neutral. Its vocabulary was built algorithmically using today’s six most widely spoken languages: Chinese,Hindi, English, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic."