There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
Given how western society is doing, Mandarin might not be a terrible call.
It never was 😹😹😹😹😹
You realise you wrote this in English don’t you?
The Year of Esperanto is finally upon us! Bonan Matenon, Europe!
Having a big economy who’s inhabitants never have to invest time into learn another language is a huge advantage for this economy. It’s not a level playing field. Today there is no reason to still support English. In Europe we should use Esperanto or another easy to learn equivalent.
A common language serves common communication. As a happenstance of history that turned out to be English. Changing it would be enormously costly and hinder cooperation. Aside from that, learning English is useful as it’s more or less commonly understood in almost every country in the world.
It’s not a happenstance, the British colonized half the planet and refused to conduct government business in anything other than English. Then the US decided to play world police and economic hegemon. Europe followed as a matter of financial necessity duo to globalization.
But it could’ve easily been French (or some other language) that ended up in the same position.
I think that what started that snowball rolling was the Seven Years War. That started the Brits on the path of being the bigger global empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years'_War
For much of the eighteenth century, France approached its wars in the same way. It would let colonies defend themselves or would offer only minimal help (sending them limited numbers of troops or inexperienced soldiers), anticipating that fights for the colonies would most likely be lost anyway. This strategy was to a degree forced upon France: geography, coupled with the superiority of the British navy, made it difficult for the French navy to provide significant supplies and support to overseas colonies. Similarly, several long land borders made an effective domestic army imperative for any French ruler. Given these military necessities, the French government, unsurprisingly, based its strategy overwhelmingly on the army in Europe: it would keep most of its army on the continent, hoping for victories closer to home. The plan was to fight to the end of hostilities and then, in treaty negotiations, to trade territorial acquisitions in Europe to regain lost overseas possessions (as had happened in, e.g., the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle). This approach did not serve France well in the war, as the colonies were indeed lost, and although much of the European war went well, by its end France had few counterbalancing European successes.
In India, the British retained the Northern Circars, but returned all the French trading ports. The treaty, however, required that the fortifications of these settlements be destroyed and never rebuilt, while only minimal garrisons could be maintained there, thus rendering them worthless as military bases. Combined with the loss of France’s ally in Bengal and the defection of Hyderabad to the British as a result of the war, this effectively brought French power in India to an end, making way for British hegemony and eventual control of the subcontinent.
Thank god it’s not French
We should start using Toki Pona.
I want to learn this. So cool
It’s super easy to learn, but extremely hard to express stuff with.
To say “I love bricks” you’d say “poki loje lon sinpin li poki tawa” which translates directly to “red box on wall is lovely to me”.
A vid by Half as Interesting on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6bGAw5yt8
The Lingua Franca didn’t change because someone decided to change it, it slowly happened. You could argue it would be nice for EU if the (local) Lingua Franca would be the language of a large member state, but I don’t see it happening by force. Probably better to just leave it to be English, even if the Irish are the only native speakers in the EU.
Ireland has English and Irish.
G’day from Australia, please don’t cut our borderless monolingual Island off. Kiwi’s probably feel similar too.
Don’t kid yourself, if you would speak English over there, how come I barely understood this Australian who told me he’s been “leggin’ it barefoot since he stacked it near the servo and now he’s flat out like a lizard drinkin’ and tryin’ to find a dunny before he cops a fair dinkum blue”.
This is clearly fabricated, you’re missing way too many swear words.
English if we want ease of communication (and is the most likely path forward)
Esperanto if the goal is to teach it to a whole generation: it is designed to be easy to understand when you already know one European language (especially a latin one I think?)
Chinese if the goal is to speak the language of the dominant non European power in the next century
Logical thinking I would think English should stay. It is by far the most known foreign language in Europe.
Question is, what should be the criteria for deciding which other language?
If it is for the sake of current global usability, English remains top.
If it is for geostrategic considerations, Spanish, French and Arabic would be the languages to cover South and Central America, large parts of Africa and West Asia.
If it is for population dominance inside the EU, it would be German, which probably will ruffle some feathers. If it is for population dominance in Europe, it should be Russian, which will ruffle a lot of feathers.
As another person said, this is bad use of terminology. Lingua franca is decided by the people through natural use, not by governance.
I don’t think such categorical distinctions are useful. Languages have been forced upon people for a long time. Italy, France, Germany, Spain, UK, and probably many other countries have forced their preferred language upon their people. Conquered peoples have had languages thrust upon them with no way to resist.
Lojban! Though esperanto maybe is more reasonable.
Anything but english or french. Yes, I’m willing to put up even with brainfuck as a spoken language
TIL brainfuck is a thing. The stuff people come up with 🤣
I’m too lazy to learn another language. Pick from English and Polish, alright?
It made us Brits lazy. There’s little reason for people to learn other languages due to English being so popular as a second language.
Don’t get me wrong, there are people. But I don’t know many people that can speak other languages. I am actually envious of others that do.
It simply amazes me when someone can speak multiple languages.
I’m now over 10 years out of school where i learned english and started to learn another language. Now with an adult brain it is quite facinating to self observe how the brain is slowly rewired to adopt to the new language and how the longer you stay on track the faster the learning becomes.
As a tri-lingual belgian I feel that so much. (more of a poly-lingual because I speak 5 languages)
I’m super fluent in belgian dutch and belgian french, so whenever I swap (which I do without thinking, I will always answer in whatever language is spoken to me) people
🤯
