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?
It's gonna be Chinese whether y'all like it or not.
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That may not be entirely true.
Some studies have shown that Danish children generally take longer to learn to talk than children from other Scandinavian countries, which are incredibly similar in most other aspects. The leading hypothesis is the complicated phonology is to blame.Popular science article in Danish, summing up the several studies
The researchers themselves however also make the valid point that
Complexity in language, however, is a difficult size [standard, I presume]. For although Danish is difficult in pronunciation, it is grammatical, for example, much simpler than German and Finnish, which in turn is easier to understand than Danish.
But I was speaking in general terms, anyway. Language, being a natural phenomenon, of course has lots of variation.
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The point is having a common language and thus economic and cultural advantages. English is a secondary language for most people. In the US, it's probably replaced with Spanish.
With Arabic, you have many more primary language speakers. Thanks to immigration, the transition to Arabic can be made easy. Then it's possible to sell products in one packaging from Portugal to India.
I am not arguing that this should happen. It's just an opportunity that is not obvious because Arabic is not a traditional European language. Though I would assume that there are now more Arabic than Basque speakers.
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.
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As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, German was easier.
Consistent spelling and pronounciation make a massive difference.
It's horrible how many German nouns have a female or male gender. Like a lamp is female for some reason, but not if it's a spot or a chandelier or whatever. This is so stupid and has to be memorized. Why is a bottle female, but not if it's a flat flask.
... and French is even more silly.
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As a Brit (but European at heart and strong “Remain” voter), I am quick to remind fellow Brits that English is a language heavily derived from our European ancestors: French, Latin, Germanic (Proto-Germanic, “Old English”, Old Norse, Romance, etc), Greek, Dutch, Spanish, and more.
I know the United Kingdom has been a royal asshat throughout the centuries but the mark of Europe is intense and undeniable; without Europe, there is no such thing as the English language (except perhaps a number of proper nouns that are rooted in the Celtic people and their ancestors).
I hope our European siblings can find solace in the fact that “English” is a distinctly European language that is full of words from all of our tongues.
The Celtic languages are closely related to European languages such as Breton, the ancestor languages having been developed and spoken widely in Europe pre-Roman conquest.
I'm only being picky because it adds even more support to your argument. You don't even need that caveat. -
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?
I propose Icelandic
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A lingua franca isn’t decided upon, it just happens to become one because of some power it’s speakers hold. In the Indonesian archipelago, Malay became a lingua franca because it was used by traders. In Europe, French was a lingua franca because French held a large amount of prestige among the European nobility. Now, English is the global lingua franca because English-speaking media have dominated the global media landscape.
If you want there to be another lingua franca in Europe, that language will somehow need to attain a good reason for it to become one. You can’t just pass a law proclaiming it
Forcing people to speak eg. German by law might work, though you’ll probably have to be prepared to coerce people into actually doing so, and thus will have to ask yourself whether that’s worth it. Otherwise, there’s a good chance people will not really give a shit about your stupid law.
Otherwise maybe abolishing all EU level accommodation for other languages than the official language in a new federalised Europe. Then, if you want anything done at that level, you have no choice but to use the official, non-English, level. This seems like it might spur an elitist environment where only a small layer of Europeans (outside of the country from which the speakers of the official language originate) will generally be able to speak that language.
This seems like it might spur an elitist environment where only a small layer of Europeans (outside of the country from which the speakers of the official language originate) will generally be able to speak that language.
Not your main point, but I watched an interview with some senior translator person at the EC, and they said that the EC very intentionally refrained from codifying a "Brussels English" over exactly this concern: that it would lead to official government documents being written in a form that the typical person in the EU would consider distant, have "Brussels elites that spoke differently". The concern was that this would have negative political effects.
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It's horrible how many German nouns have a female or male gender. Like a lamp is female for some reason, but not if it's a spot or a chandelier or whatever. This is so stupid and has to be memorized. Why is a bottle female, but not if it's a flat flask.
... and French is even more silly.
It's called "grammatical gender". The gender is of the word not what the word represents. It evolved in many different languages meaning it did so for a reason. My guess is that it started with good intentions as many things do have a sex. However, realization crept in that there are far more things on this planet without a sex (or even an identifiable one) and something had to be done. Probably it didn't sound good either.
There are also languages where the concept of gender (not just grammatical gender, but gender itself) doesn't exist and they have no gendered pronouns (everyone and everything is an "it" --> "the man, it moved", "the woman, it sang", ...).
Languages are fascinating from a purely theoretical standpoint.
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This seems like it might spur an elitist environment where only a small layer of Europeans (outside of the country from which the speakers of the official language originate) will generally be able to speak that language.
Not your main point, but I watched an interview with some senior translator person at the EC, and they said that the EC very intentionally refrained from codifying a "Brussels English" over exactly this concern: that it would lead to official government documents being written in a form that the typical person in the EU would consider distant, have "Brussels elites that spoke differently". The concern was that this would have negative political effects.
That’s really interesting. Language is one of the main ways we distinguish ourselves (often subconciously). Designing a special Brussels English would likely make the ‘Brussels Elite’ more of a distinguishable ‘they’ indeed.
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It's called "grammatical gender". The gender is of the word not what the word represents. It evolved in many different languages meaning it did so for a reason. My guess is that it started with good intentions as many things do have a sex. However, realization crept in that there are far more things on this planet without a sex (or even an identifiable one) and something had to be done. Probably it didn't sound good either.
There are also languages where the concept of gender (not just grammatical gender, but gender itself) doesn't exist and they have no gendered pronouns (everyone and everything is an "it" --> "the man, it moved", "the woman, it sang", ...).
Languages are fascinating from a purely theoretical standpoint.
It even existed in Old and Middle english, upto the 1500s.
Some nouns still have genders in english. But this is more an exception than a rule. Ie. a ship/boat is female (called “she”), while nature is also feminine (often personified as “Mother nature”).
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No language is inherently easy to learn. If a language is easy to learn depends on what languages you already know, thus to a Dutchman it will be much easier to learn English than to a Russian or a Thai. It is true that learning English is made a lot easier by having such a huge media presence, meaning it’s very easy to immerse yourself even without living in an English-speaking country.
As a Dutchman living in Germany I can attest to the immense difference that dubbing makes. While even young children in the Netherlands consume tons of English language media and have done so for decades, their peers in Germany generally get only dubbed versions. This leads to a lackluster immersion when "properly" learning English.
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As a Dutchman living in Germany I can attest to the immense difference that dubbing makes. While even young children in the Netherlands consume tons of English language media and have done so for decades, their peers in Germany generally get only dubbed versions. This leads to a lackluster immersion when "properly" learning English.
Yeah, I’m also Dutch and watch German television often, and I always think it’s odd that all foreign movies have been dubbed over. In the Netherlands, that only happens to movies for children who can’t read yet. I think it’s a bit of a shame too, as I like to hear different languages.
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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.
I feel like that's just a tall tale that Feynman told the author
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True! Obviously forgot. At least quite a small proportion. And English is just one of the two official languages.
At least quite a small proportion. And English is just one of the two official languages.
Oh right, Malta too
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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.
Albanian would also fit your criteria as it's also completely different from everything else and fucking strange at the same time.
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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?
I'll laugh my ass off if it's French, I'll really have had the bilingual easy mode languages if that happens.
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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?
Let's switch to (a) sign language.
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English is a global lingua franca, not just european. And it's not just because of the american and british influence, but because it's a relatively easy language.
Also the translator programs are better and better, this is actually a good and fitting usecase of current LLMs. I think we are not far away from the babel fish.
It's a lingua franca, and I don't even think it's about being easy to learn... avalanche effects are completely sufficient to explain its status. Many people already speak English, so more people learn English to speak with them, now even more people speak English, and so on, and so forth... the development of any lingua franca only depends on the ability to talk to as many people as possible. It's absolutely a bonus if it's easy and quickens the process, but at some point the pure amount of speakers outside ones own country becomes the overwhelming factor.
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Albanian would also fit your criteria as it's also completely different from everything else and fucking strange at the same time.
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.
