word in English-speaking countries). Due to their status-oriented nature, people from the Far East civilizations often ask for "administrative form" information, especially in Japan. Among Europeans (includes the Americas and Australia) and sometimes east Asians (esp. in Japan), a "thank you" is expected and welcomed in quite a number of situations (perhaps the most in Great Britain and North America), whereas South Asian and Middle Eastern people use the phrase in a more economical way and often content themselves with simple looks of thanks; on the other hand, other non-western civilizations (e.g. Polynesians of the South Pacific and Native American tribes) have rather extended formulae of thanks. With requests (cf. especially Trosborg 1995 and Cenoz/Valencia 1996), the bare imperative is normally avoided in favor of devices such as questions, modal auxiliaries, subjunctive, conditional, special adverbs. The exchange of verbal stems, which is found in Japanese and Sinic languages, is not a part of (Indo-)European languages. When somebody has to say no, this is normally accompanied by some form of apology or explanation. In the civilizations of the Far East and many Native American tribes in North America, the formal equivalents for "no" are unacceptable and/or tabooed in general. Apologies are necessary with face-threatening acts or after somebody has intruded into somebody else's private sphere—which is bigger and thus more easily violated in North America and Asia than in Europe and bigger in Europe (esp. the British Isles) than in Latin America and the Arab nations, and the concept of privacy and apology is universal, but varies from northern/western, eastern/Slavic and southern/Mediterranean countries (cf. especially Trosborg 1995). By comparing the national descriptions by Axtell (1998) and Morris et al. (1979), one can conclude that in Europe one can safely make compliments about somebody's clothes and appearance, meals and restaurants, voluntary offerings, a room's equipment. Linguae Francae (Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006) Three linguae francae are prominent in European history: (Medieval and Neo-) Latin with a gradual decline as lingua franca since the late Middle Ages, when the vernacular languages gained more and more importance (first language academy in Italy in 1582/83), in the 17th century even at universities) apart from the Vatican). French (from the times of Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV, c. 1648 (i.e. after the Thirty Years' War, which had hardly affected France, thus free to prosper), till the end of