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?
The Year of Esperanto is finally upon us! Bonan Matenon, Europe!
Nia tempo venis!
I would actually love a law that says Esperanto has to be the first foreign language taught in each EU school.
Why not a combination out of all European languages. Might be a huge mess, but still.
Edit: I‘m an idiot.
Yes, cause many people do speak “broken” english and its compared to french or other languages easy to learn.
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 juzed insted of de klasterfak dat iz de regjular Inglish speling.
I wanted to learn French for a long time now. Would be a great motivation
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 due to globalization.
If history had taken a different turn here or there. It could have easily been French or German or Dutch. In “our timeline” it happened to be the British Empire.
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
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?
How many folks speak Esperanto already?
As many as Lithuanians, Latvians, or Basque, and twice as many as Estonians.
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.
This. It’s the same with forcing „wokeness“ on people. To safely implement change, the transition needs to be slow and steady.
Ireland has English and Irish.
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.
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
Hll, thats discouraging
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.
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”.
I felt that. Not Australian, but I felt that.
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.
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.
Through authority over schools the Lingua Franca is controllable.
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?”.
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.
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.
I think we are at a point now where almost everybody in Europe is able to speak at least some English. So cultural exchange has never been easier. Why make it more difficult again by adding another language people have to learn first?
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)[Edit: see crappywittyname’s comment below].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 (already very fine) argument. You don’t even need that caveat.
