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.
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.
@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.
@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.
Yes, next!
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.
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, but 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)
As a non-native speaker, I’d say that your summary of the upsides and downsides matches my experience.
maybe there should be a new EU-standard fonetik version.
Or maybe it’s finally time for Shavian alphabet to shine!
Or Uniscript!
Wow, I had never actually heard of that!
If that intrigues you, you should perhaps watch this, or follow the guy in general https://youtu.be/UAI3g6zVyAI
Isn’t the new official EU language irish English? I speak english with heavy german accent, can this be the ligua franca?
Latinam magnam iterum faciamus. 😎 🥂 🧐
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. 🤭
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.” 😂
Yea, I think English might become the glue between languages that will strengthen, not weaken the EU, same with the Indian Union (they are both Eurasian peninsulas too :D)
I’ll laugh my ass off if it’s French, I’ll really have had the bilingual easy mode languages if that happens.
It’s gonna be Chinese whether y’all like it or not.
Eh, maybe, maybe not. They aren’t really the juggernaut they used to be, and their birth rate is now below replacement so there’s no “they’ll just outbreed us” jerk to do, even.
A lingua franca isn’t decided upon, it just happens to become one because of some power its 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 now being ‘the lingua franca of Europe’.
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.
You could also maybe abolish 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, 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.
This all seems a bit fantastical, though. Unless Europeans en masse stop consuming English language media, and at the same time start consuming the media of one specific other language (thus it’s a movement away from English and toward some other language by language users themselves), there won’t be a new lingua franca in Europe.
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 a “Brussels elites that spoke differently from me” impact. The concern was that this would have negative political effects.
Can’t recall the name of the guy, but IIRC he had a British accent. Was an older guy.
Did drive home to me that there is a lot of political consideration taking place over policy decisions that I probably wouldn’t normally have expected.
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.
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.
It’s 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.
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. 😅
Basque might be the most neutral language of them all, right? Does it have a connection with any other European language?
Furthermore it’s the only European language there is. Every other language spoken in Europe descends from the Eurasian steppe. Well, most likely with a pinch of Kaukasian. It’s several millennia overdue that we honour the Euskari!
Basque it is!
Nope. Basque is considered a language isolate, not related to any other language.
Nope, it’s an isolate.
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.
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 a 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 anglicizing the pronounciantion of french words gaining extra points and impressed faces.
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.
I feel like that’s just a tall tale that Feynman told the author, like most of those stories
As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, German was easier.
Consistent spelling and pronounciation make a massive difference.
Consistent spelling and pronunciations but even native speakers get pronouns for certain nouns wrong sometimes.
And as for German being consistent there are still situations like Umfahren (Drive around) and Umfahren (Run over) that are written the same but pronounced different.
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.
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”).
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 don’t have to read or write anything, there’s not much to cry about.
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.
Yeah, English Grammer is basically just Germanic (not to be confused with the Germanic language German, which is just another Germanic language, not the origin). Our words though are not. Most of the words that make up most of our sentences are still their Germanic versions, but talking about specific things could use words from dozens of languages. This makes pronunciation really challenging, because you can’t just know the origin from looking at it, and even if you can it might have shifted from that.
I HATE the idea that we would have some Kind of built into us translators. Languages are a crucial part of human development and, therefore, they should be learned in school the old way. (Ofc school must also evolve)
it’s a relatively easy language
I don’t know about that part. The orthography at least is wild.
Every ‘real’ languare has wild parts. there are constructed languares that don’t but if they became common wild parts will likely be added over time.
Yep. I always liked the idea of a conlang, but there’s nothing stopping language change with them.
No language is inherently easy to learn. Whether a language is easy to learn depends on how close it is to the 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.
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.
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.
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.
