[Rifflesby]

I don't think it's anything as general as that. If that were the case, why have we only been given these particular countries? Why not include Australia, where the Aboriginies have painted since time immemorial?

It seems to me, the answer must be either something specific to this set of countries, or something that can be formed from individual attributes from these countries (like the anagrams people were working with earlier).

Unfortunately, I haven't yet come up with any reasonable suggestions that haven't already been thought of. :/


edit: Though if it helps, I've just noticed that while the continental US and Alaska are shown on the map, I see no sign of Hawaii.

[Lilian]

thinking on the lines of communication i thought of cave paintings
and tried

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

painting

but alas incorrect

[norman182]

i have tried with no luck

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

mama indo-european germanic maths dialect vernacular

[Magma]

Yeah, this game's good for "I didn't know that" tangents.

Anyway, tried and failed:

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M Ma Mama

I guess I got a few more to get through...

[SilentlyBroken]

Magma wrote:

Ah. I was just going by this: Spoiler (Rollover to View): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Sign Tried "International Sign" and "Gestuno" as well, by the way. Neither worked.

hee That link lead me to the deaflympics wiki Totally off-topic, but I never knew that had a wiki.

[Magma]

Ah. I was just going by this:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Sign Tried "International Sign" and "Gestuno" as well, by the way. Neither worked.

[SilentlyBroken]

Magma: that was an idea of mine. Although I was thinking more just

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sign language, as they are all different, but vaguely the same. There is no international sign language

I ought to know

[Magma]

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

So is love, I hear Anyway, I tried: International Sign Language To no avail.

[ahdok]

Hunting4Treasure wrote:

Ooh! I just had another thought! No matter what country you're in, what about... Spoiler (Rollover to View): ... the first *computer* language? ENIAC- claimed to be the first computer language. The other contestant for "first" is PLANKALKUL. Designed by J. Prosper Eckert and John Mauchly between 1943-45. BASIC- language originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960's.

well, to counter that...

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Music is a universal language. Doesn't work as a solution though

[Hunting4Treasure]

Also, working from SpinneNetz's list, taking the first letter of the *country*, instead of the language, yields:
AAABEEEEGGIIJJKLLMNNORSSSUUU
For what it's worth, the word LANGUAGE is in there.

[Hunting4Treasure]

Ooh! I just had another thought! No matter what country you're in, what about...

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

... the first *computer* language? ENIAC- claimed to be the first computer language. The other contestant for "first" is PLANKALKUL. Designed by J. Prosper Eckert and John Mauchly between 1943-45. BASIC- language originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960's.

Edited to add this, which seems to fit perfectly!

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BABEL- 1) a functional logic language whose operational semantics is based on lazy narrowing and provides some higher order features. 2) a subset of ALGOL 60 with many ALGOL W extensions. 3) higher-order functional plus first-order logic language.

[manleym]

I found this in my desk at work this morning maybe it may be of some significance?

[Belogroak]

This really is a curious card.

I am more surprised by the countries that are missing. For example Germany, Australia and Canada rule out most connections with the UK and US.

The only thing I could come up with was:

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Imperial - as the US and the UK still use miles/pounds, Russia and Japan both had imperial measurements.

Unfortunately its wrong

[rockhound]

mother tongue

[Stratman]

For those looking at the languages aspect of each country - just came across this...

http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp

I am at work (just leaving) and did not have time to have much of a look, but sheesh, it lists 42 living languages for Angola alone!