Hey Shirish - How are you? Hope all is well. Thought this might be of interest to some folks: In the beginning was the word. The word was god. In the end too there was the word. The word was English (that was what I learnt :P ) Source: - http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/09/asia/englede.php Across cultures, English is the word SINGAPORE: Riding the crest of globalization and technology, English dominates the world as no language ever has, and some linguists are now saying it may never be dethroned as the king of languages. Others see pitfalls, but the factors they cite only underscore the grip English has on the world: cataclysms like nuclear war or climate change or the eventual perfection of a translation machine that would make a common language unnecessary. Some insist that linguistic evolution will continue to take its course over the centuries and that English could eventually die as a common language as Latin did, or Phoenician or Sanskrit or Sogdian before it. "If you stay in the mind-set of 15th-century Europe, the future of Latin is extremely bright," said Nicholas Ostler, the author of a language history called "Empires of the Word" who is writing a history of Latin. "If you stay in the mind-set of the 20th-century world, the future of English is extremely bright." That skepticism seems to be a minority view. Experts on the English language like David Crystal, author of "English as a Global Language," say the world has changed so drastically that history is no longer a guide. More at the link above :)