Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?
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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?
Is this some kind of ragebait? I speak French but if you look at the attitude that the French have towards their language and compare that to their average commandment of the English language, why should we do that to a whole continent?
If you ask me people in the EU should be raised bilingually and learn English from kindergarten on. All administration and official stuff should be bilingual. That would be a way for the EU to remain competitive. But no, we rather go down the Nazi route, way to go.
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if by westerners you mean english speakers, then yes, it's known to be one of the more difficult ones. it's ultimately subjective, but what people find hard about mandarin is 1.the writing system 2.tones
what also doesn't help is definitely lack of exposure, chinese popular media isn't very popular in the west
Also Chinese people are confused af if you try to speak Chinese with them. I tried several times and they were just looking at me like wtf are you doing. It’s probably a combination of not really getting why a foreigner would start speaking Chinese with them and me being extraordinarily bad at doing it too.
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Again, English would make so much more sense as a common language than Arabic. There are more English speakers in Egypt alone than there are Arabic speakers in the whole EU.
Yeah but Arabic is much cooler than English.
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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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I would actually love a law that says Esperanto has to be the first foreign language taught in each EU school.
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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.
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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?
What if it remained English, but with the change that a new phonetic spelling system is used instead of the clusterfuck that is regular English spelling?
Wat if it remejnd Inglish, bat wit de chejnđ dat a nju fonetik speling sistem iz uzed insted of de klasterfak dat iz de regjular Inglish speling.
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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".
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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.
Today there is no reason to still support English
This forum bringing together people from different countries, is in itself proof that there is a reason. Many people are already comfortable if not fluid in the language. How many folks speak Esperanto already?
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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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Only in the region you have control over. Example, EU decides French is the new lingua Franca. That doesn't mean China, India or the US will start learning French. If they don't then it isn't really the lingua franca.
Of course that is a limitation.
While we're at it we could also mention that like with a lot of things you can control, this is also a thing you don't have absolute control over. But with majority consensus you can teach whatever language and really focus a lot of hours on it, and it's significantly more likely to be a successful widely spoken language that serves as the lingua franca.
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Yeah but Arabic is much cooler than English.
Could you explain why? Is there something about the language that makes it cool?
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Only in the region you have control over. Example, EU decides French is the new lingua Franca. That doesn't mean China, India or the US will start learning French. If they don't then it isn't really the lingua franca.
The thread is "Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?".
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Irish? Isn't it called Gaelic?
Gaelic is the language family and includes Scottish, Welsh, and another language I believe (Brittain from Brittainy?). Kind of like how Spanish and French are romance languages or English and German are Germanic languages.
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Could you explain why? Is there something about the language that makes it cool?
It sounds badass
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It sounds badass
Opinions really differ on that
And every language has rich vocab.I was kinda expecting something along the lines of linguistics e.g Arabic has no gender, the script is alphasyllabic, it's Subject Object Verb, sentences have strict structure, or something like that. Just a personal opinion isn't really convincing, unfortunately.
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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.
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Opinions really differ on that
And every language has rich vocab.I was kinda expecting something along the lines of linguistics e.g Arabic has no gender, the script is alphasyllabic, it's Subject Object Verb, sentences have strict structure, or something like that. Just a personal opinion isn't really convincing, unfortunately.
Nah I mean I have some friends and they told me a camel has like 50 different names depending on how old it is and what it’s doing right now, e.g. a female camel who gave birth three months ago or a sitting camel or a camel that drinks an unusual amount of water (I’m making up stuff rn) would have their own names. Or here’s a list of date cultivars, there are like tens of names for the different types of dates it wild: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_date_cultivars
Otherwise I was honestly just kidding. It’s an interesting question but realistically it’s gonna be English and imo kids should learn English from kindergarten on and people would be bilingual like in India, or Kurds, Amazigh, Sudanese people who are native speakers in Arabic and their own local language. We could have all administration EU wide be bilingual too and that would honestly make it so much easier for everyone to move around and also for migrants that we desperately need to come here.
But with fascism being cool again I‘m afraid we’re moving far away from what I have in mind.
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The thread is "Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?".
Whoops, deleted
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It's definitely "der Joghurt" tho.
fite me
