Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?
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That's gonna take a while
French was replaced within 60-80 years. Such change isn't fast, unless forced. However, I don't know how it could be forced. We aren't in a feudalistic system anymore and EU interests are heavily influenced by an English-speaking upper class.
And I rather doubt that Europe's Germanic-speaking countries will stop using English as a lingua franca anytime soon, it's just too easy to learn for them compared to any other possible candidate.
Try this.
Let's hope it's not going to be Russian anytime soon.
One can only hope, not only because of the implications, but also because the language is very complicated IMO. Their case system is horrific.
Their case system is horrific.
More so than German?
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Me too, but later I learned a bit of german and latin. The thing is you can fake english easily, like "why use lot word when few do trick" is a totally understandable sentence. Word order is not as stict as in german, no cases, no grammatical genders, verb tenses are mostly optional. Pronunciation is messed up though.
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but because it's a relatively easy language
I literally cried learning English as a kid lol
Now try to learn Portuguese, or German, or Russian. English has wonky phonetics, but has relatively simple grammar. As a bonus it's not properly standardized, so whatever you come up with is going to be correct in at least one of the existing dialects.
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Two views on what language to chose:
The language most spoken in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_speakers_in_Europe
The language most spoken worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakersSo it looks like it might be either German, Spanish or French, depending on how you would assess it. No surprises there.
Now to convert everybody, not so easy
As a German, I would not want German to become a language of communication within Europe. The comparative political power of Germany within the EU is already too high, smaller Eastern and Southeastern EU members already have had to form alliances like Visegrad.
Ireland being the only country with English as major language within the EU makes English actually a more neutral language than languages of the populous countries. One could call it European English.
Maybe SĂĄmi languages, Basque and Maltese could come together and form the most distinct language that is most neutral? /s
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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?
English is good for the reasons pointed out. Also: It's no language of the EU (at least for now) so no country gets an edge over the others which should be considered too. (I'm a native German speaker)
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English is Germanic, so it's a pointless change. Latin would be cool I guess, but English is mostly derived from it anyway, just simplified.
English isn't going anywhere. It's too embedded now.
but English is mostly derived from it anyway
IMO English is more Germanic than Latin. There's certainly a lot of latin/french loanwords, but that's true for all other Germanic languages, too (even if to a somewhat lesser degree). Romance languages like French and Italian are actually derived from Latin and they are a lot different from English but fairly similar to each other (especially Italian, Spanish and Portuguese).
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This is not such a big advantage because of the way words are constructed, by gluing words together. So there are fewer words to learn to have the same vocabulary.
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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?
No, most people are pragmatic in this case and eastern countries changed from Russian ~30 years ago so another change isn't coming any time soon.
As my parents saw the change from "it is really appreciated that you can speak English" to "it is expected that you can use it". I can tell that it is so engrained in our multinational exchange that it won't be even desirable.
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English is good for the reasons pointed out. Also: It's no language of the EU (at least for now) so no country gets an edge over the others which should be considered too. (I'm a native German speaker)
It's no language of the EU (at least for now)
Ireland.
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Now try to learn Portuguese, or German, or Russian. English has wonky phonetics, but has relatively simple grammar. As a bonus it's not properly standardized, so whatever you come up with is going to be correct in at least one of the existing dialects.
Plus English has influences from everywhere. In my oral abitur exam, I got stuck once or twice and made up words by anglicize the pronounciantion of french words gaining extra points and impressed faces.
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English is good for the reasons pointed out. Also: It's no language of the EU (at least for now) so no country gets an edge over the others which should be considered too. (I'm a native German speaker)
Ireland?
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The grammar is fairly simple, but spelling is a total train wreck and an unparalleled nightmare of inconsistencies and convoluted rules. As long as you donât have to read or write anything, thereâs not much to cry about.
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German would be nice.
Nah, that would take the last bit of joy out of the German political system's misuse of the EU commission as a toxic waste dump for politicians who have become too bad for domestic use.
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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?
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It depends on what Europe wants to be. The language is in some ways connected to the culture. Would Europe get a more Mediterranean savoir vivre if everybody spoke Spanish or French? I think so.
An ambitious and interesting option for Europe could be Arabic as the lingua franca. If Europe commits, other countries like Iran or India could also be interested in joining. That could create a huge area with a single language as long as it doesn't splinter into dialects like the current Arabic.
Nobody in Europe wants Iran or India to join.
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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?
English is mostly used in commercial now, changing it would be costly and you would need the commitment of many others people to accept a new change in how to approach the world or just Europe, it's a tipe of commitment I doubt people would be willingly to accept.
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Itâs not possible to please everybody so I vote for Basque and pleasing nobody.
Came here to say that. I intended to propose an immensely complex language that almost nobody understands and that is unrelated to any other family of languages. My choice was Hungarian or Finnish but Euskadi (aka "Basque") clearly beats it. I had the privilege to learn some words from Basque coworker years ago when I was living in Spain for a while and I swear it is so utterly alien to anything I've heard, that it must be of extraterrestrial origin.
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I root for Spanish! Creating a bridge with my Latino friends and thus upsetting the US at the same time.
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Nobody in Europe wants Iran or India to join.
The point of speaking Arabic would be to have the same language as North Africa and Arabia. And once Europe speaks Arabic, neighboring countries like Turkye, Iran or Pakistan and India could see the benefit in joining.
This doesn't mean that those countries become part of the EU. It would just create a huge zone with a single language which has its own advantages.
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The point of speaking Arabic would be to have the same language as North Africa and Arabia. And once Europe speaks Arabic, neighboring countries like Turkye, Iran or Pakistan and India could see the benefit in joining.
This doesn't mean that those countries become part of the EU. It would just create a huge zone with a single language which has its own advantages.
What exactly is the point? Most people in Europe speak at least a little English, a ton of people in India speak English, Arabic is completely alien to Europe. There is no advantage to Arabic over English.
