"I disagree. The barrier exists in full effect for everyone that hasn't chosen to accept you as their friend. So unless you have more than a handful of friends playing on the opposite faction, this change won't mean much in terms of communicating with that faction."

I would like to be able to understand them if I really wanted to, though. My point is, if I really REALLY need to, I can currently go roll an alt and just /w them. Now I can have friends to talk to cross-faction, and even ask those friends to /w someone or /s something on my behalf. There really is not much of a barrier anyway, and it seems kind of dull for language skills to just "be there" but have so many routes around the barrier anyway.

"Moonfax is right. The language barrier stops you from saying to random hordies, 'Hey...I need more kills in the Cauldron of Flames for my Wintergrasp Ranger achievement. Wanna trade HKs?'

Sure, if happen to have a friend on the same server with an appropriate leveled Horde you can still technically do that, but do you really want random Horde and Alliance being able to pug their way to PvP achievements together?"

The only problem with this thinking: there is nothing stopping it now, only slowing it down, and it will become even less of an inconvenience when the new Battle.Net friend system is put in place. As I said above in this comment, replying to Moonfax, you can do EXACTLY what you are saying already, and it will be easier in the future. Do I want them to pug their way to PvP achievements? No, but (I assume) this is being done already, so in my mind that little bit of sacredness is compromised.

What I want is one good reason why you shouldn't be able to communicate cross-faction that the current liberties with cross-faction characters on PvP realms, the Battle.Net friend system, and ventrilo do not completely circumvent.

To me, RP realms would be more immersive with this. Battlegrounds and arenas already have people who trick the system with reverse-engineered messages ('I love you' and whatnot), and please tell me it would not further your desire to kill the enemy faction if they were just as annoying as all the trade chat trolls, AND you could understand their taunts, but you knew there was opportunity to go out and find them with a red name for some payback.