Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?
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English has a blend of Germanic and Romantic features, which is nice for Europe, and no inflections to memorise, which is also nice. You could also argue that no grammatical gender is a positive feature.
On the downside, the orthography is ass, so maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version. The contractions are confusing. A non-native speaker can maybe add some more, that's all I've heard about.
We could also use this as a chance to push Esperanto!
Gi estis desegnita por ci tiu specifa afero! (Please forgive me its been a while haha)
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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?
Ja, warum nicht Deutsch? Deutsch ist in Europa sehr weit verbreitet und wird von vielen Sprechern auch als Zweitsprache gesprochen.
So, why is it English and not German? Because immigrants in the US decided to speak English. And there are so many people who can understand at least a few words in English. But as a German I'd prefer German, too. It is spoken by many Europeans.
Je suis désolé, chers Français, mon français est trop mauvais pour que je recommande que cela soit recommandé comme la principale chose européenne.
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Not even my hate for the US or Britain is enough for me to learn Latin. I had this shit for 5 years and I didnt learn anything. Fuck this bullshit.
I had to learn this crap for 5 years, too. And all I can remember is the one sentence which I learned:"Gallia est divisa in partes tres."
But I don't know for what this is good for. đ€
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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?
A lingua franca isn't controllable. French was the lingua franca as it had been the dominant language of trade. Then the British Empire and later USA emerged and dominated global trade, and it became the lingua franca through shear necessity.
In the tech age, English has also become the lingua franca which is likely to cement it's position into the future. In Europe, it's been a convenient second language for many as it allowed Europeans to compete in global trade and also talk to each other with 1 common language, also avoiding nationalist concerns around language. English has also been less controversial as a second language than everyone learning French or German for example given the history of previous european wars.
A language isn't owned by any country, so it doesn't matter that the US is going crazy or that the UK left the EU. English is likely to stay the lingua franca in the west and in Europe as so many people already speak it, it's already well established in schools and culture and in all honesty there isn't an obvious alternative.
In terms of economics, China is powerful but Chinese is spoken largely by one country, and is hard for Europeans to learn due to how fundamentally different it is. India is emerging as an economy, with English it's own lingua franca in a continent divided by numerous languages. Urdu is being pushed by the hindu nationalist government but the global reality is that speaking english is a strength for Indian citizens in trade and global work place, so it's unlikely people will stop learning and speaking English in India in the foreseeable future.
The only other viable alternative in global terms currently for Europe would be Spanish due to the shear number of native speakers. But the problem remains that most Europeans don't speak Spanish and while there is a large number of spanish speakers, they are heavily concentrated in the Americas. Meanwhile English is already spoken widely in Europe, North America outside of Mexico, India, and many other former British Colonies including widely in Africa, Oceania and across Asia.
It's certainly possible things may change, but at the moment it seems unlikely. We're not seeing a huge trend of people moving away from English. One possibility though is that translation apps become near instantaneous and people move away from learning any 2nd language. However I personally think that is unlikely as a translation app can never be perfectly instantaneous due to the nature of grammer - you need the whole of a sentence to translate into another language with a totally different sentence structure, especially for longer and more complex sentences.
So I think it's unlikely English will be displaced as the lingua franca. It is also unneeded - it benefits Europe that a European language is the lingua franca (regardless of the UK exiting the EU etc), and it also benefits Europe as so many Europeans speak English - so the best thing for Europe is to help spread English, and offer a different influence and culture from the US with other English speakers particuarly in emerging economies. English can be Europe's trojan horse for sharing it's culture and values.
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I had to learn this crap for 5 years, too. And all I can remember is the one sentence which I learned:
"Gallia est divisa in partes tres."
But I don't know for what this is good for. đ€
I know the first few sentences from the first lection of my first Latin book
Uni est Quintus? Quintus in hortus est. Quinte, Quinte, Caecilia clamat"
That basically all I remember.
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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?
@atro_city I remember a few years ago there was a French far-right group or something that proposed Latin to be the lingua franca instead, lol. But I haven't heard anything since. -
@atro_city I remember a few years ago there was a French far-right group or something that proposed Latin to be the lingua franca instead, lol. But I haven't heard anything since.
I'm so old that I actually studied Latin in school though I wouldn't be surprised if my school still teaches it.
To be honest it was really useful as a base language for learning French and I've always found it easy to pick up bits quickly and get about easily in Spain and Italy as a result.
Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though. Would not recommend as a Lingua Franca.
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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?
Yes, next!
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That works for almost all European languages. In one of his books Richard Feynman tells a story about when he went to Brazil and didn't how to say "so" in Portuguese so he used "Consequentemente" by adapting Consequently and everyone was impressed with his fluency.
there's also a story about how he just decided to fire off nonsense phonemes at some visiting professor from some asian country because he thought it was funny and people were apparently impressed at his diction. i don't think his perceived audience reactions should be taken at face value.
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I'm so old that I actually studied Latin in school though I wouldn't be surprised if my school still teaches it.
To be honest it was really useful as a base language for learning French and I've always found it easy to pick up bits quickly and get about easily in Spain and Italy as a result.
Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though. Would not recommend as a Lingua Franca.
@khannie I studied it too, but a Romanic language is already my native one, so I found it even less useful. Glad I escaped alive. -
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?
It's because of the network effect. If you only know your local language and want to unlock speaking to the rest of the world when learning English gets you pretty far.
A lot of people start learning English because a lot of people speak English. Since now Europe, North America, half of Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, Oceania speak English to some extent that I know of.
It's absolutely bonkers how far English has gotten in one generation so learning anything else as a second language is pretty weird.
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Ja, warum nicht Deutsch? Deutsch ist in Europa sehr weit verbreitet und wird von vielen Sprechern auch als Zweitsprache gesprochen.
So, why is it English and not German? Because immigrants in the US decided to speak English. And there are so many people who can understand at least a few words in English. But as a German I'd prefer German, too. It is spoken by many Europeans.
Je suis désolé, chers Français, mon français est trop mauvais pour que je recommande que cela soit recommandé comme la principale chose européenne.
Pardonneh muah, ish speake nest par les languages forrinée. Toot le mond ist speeking mine sprackgghe so varoomm you speekeh anything else? Ish not geunderstand.
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As a non-native speaker, Iâd say that your summary of the upsides and downsides matches my experience.
maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version.
Or maybe itâs finally time for Shavian alphabet to shine!
Or Uniscript!
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I know the first few sentences from the first lection of my first Latin book
Uni est Quintus? Quintus in hortus est. Quinte, Quinte, Caecilia clamat"
That basically all I remember.
when I see this: do you mean "Ubi est"?My first sentence was: "Marcus silvam currit."
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Yes, but when I asked an actual Albanian (another co-worker on a slightly adventurous job abroad) about the Albanian language and relations to other European languages in a friendly small talk he got rather angry and weirdly nationalistic. So I decided it might be healthier not to ask silly questions to anyone Albanian (very recommendable for most Balkan things!) and considered the Alban language as probably too dangerous to bother with. Retrospectively, I think he just didn't want to admit he had no idea.
Yeah, asking those questions to any balkanese is dangerous. I had the luck to spend some weeks with an albanese family while traveling and while being weird they were also the most friendly and welcoming people I ever met (after every Canadian). I learned some albanian while being there, but the language doesn't share anything with the other languages around there. And i was explicitly forbidden to learn any curse words, because that could be apparently really dangerous if the wrong people heard it. But if you ever get the chance to visit Albania, i can't recommend it enough.
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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.
An ambitious and interesting option for Europe could be Arabic as the lingua franca.
There's Maltese, which is an official EU language, albeit probably not the most useful for interchange with the Arab world as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language
Maltese (Maltese: Malti, also L-Ilsien Malti or Lingwa Maltija) is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata. The only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union and the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet, and the only Afroasiatic language other than Somali to use a Latin script, it is spoken by the Maltese people and is the national language of Malta.
The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic, which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between mainstream varieties of Arabic.
Maltese has always been written in the Latin script, the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages. It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.
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We will probably see another language become the lingua franca
That's gonna take a while. Chinese is an unlikely candidate due to how difficult it is to learn to speak and especially read and write, despite the rising international influence of the Chinese state. And I rather doubt that Europe's Germanic-speaking countries will stop using English as a lingua franca anytime soon, it's just to easy to learn for them compared to any other possible candidate.
Let's hope it's not going to be Russian anytime soon.
The Chinese writing system probably isn't so bad with predictive text entry but I think a tonal language with limited sounds has some challenges taking on the dominance of English in global culture. I like songs in other languages but being able to listen to artists from South America, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Norway, Finland singing in English is a privilege I don't take for granted. When you go down the rabbit hole and discover a country like Japan has a lot of talented musicians it is sometimes hard to understand why they don't have more global recognition until you understand that countries struggles with the English language proficiency.
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As a non-native speaker, Iâd say that your summary of the upsides and downsides matches my experience.
maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version.
Or maybe itâs finally time for Shavian alphabet to shine!
This is awesome. Would like to try this with Anglish (https://anglish.org/wiki/Anglish) to make a true English English.
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when I see this: do you mean "Ubi est"?
My first sentence was: "Marcus silvam currit."
Yes I meant that. My auto correction fucked it up.
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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?
