In your article about the lure of invented languages, such as Esperanto and Klingon, you wonder about the future of English (“Tongues and Grooves,” August 56, 2011). You cite David Crystal, an expert on English, who reckons that it is only a matter of time before automatic machine translation becomes so sophisticated that English loses its rôle as lingua franca. “Enjoy it while you can,” you conclude merrily. I wonder about all this. To begin with, English is just like Esperanto or Klingon to many people around the world. Some of them may pick it up just for fun, too. More important, English is hardly fixed once and for all. Both English-speakers and those who pick it up for whatever reason, including sheer fun, are free to mold it to their hearts’ desire, just as any of the growing number of made-up languages. Soon enough, those fabulous automatic machine translators may be needed to help those using the lingua franca understand each other somewhat better.