Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?

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.

Westerners = Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand

1.the writing system 2.tones

Indeed. I just looked it up and the writing system is logographic. To my knowledge, not a single Western language is logographic and more alphabetic.

The tonal system is also rare (not sure if exists at all) in Western countries.

To me, those are two major differences that are difficult to overcome.

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

Isn't it the most difficult language to learn for Westerners?

You realise you wrote this in English don't you?

How many folks speak Esperanto already?

As many as Lithuanians, Latvians, or Basque, and twice as many as Estonians.

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?

Why not a combination out of all European languages. Might be a huge mess, but still.

Edit: I‘m an idiot.

Nia tempo venis!

I would actually love a law that says Esperanto has to be the first foreign language taught in each EU school.

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%27_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

But it could've easily been French (or some other language) that ended up in the same position.

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.

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.

Hll, thats discouraging

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

I want to learn this. So cool

This is clearly fabricated, you're missing way too many swear words.

I felt that. Not Australian, but I felt that.

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".

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.

Irish? Isn't it called Gaelic?

Ireland has English and Irish.

This. It’s the same with forcing „wokeness“ on people. To safely implement change, the transition needs to be slow and steady.

TIL brainfuck is a thing. The stuff people come up with 🤣

I don't think such categorical distinctions are useful. Languages have been forced upon people for a long time. Italy, France, Germany, Spain, UK, and probably many other countries have forced their preferred language upon their people. Conquered peoples have had languages thrust upon them with no way to resist.

🤯

As a tri-lingual belgian I feel that so much. (more of a poly-lingual because I speak 5 languages)

I'm super fluent in belgian dutch and belgian french, so whenever I swap (which I do without thinking, I will always answer in whatever language is spoken to me) people

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.

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.

@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.

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.

Whoops, deleted :)

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.

Through authority over schools the Lingua Franca is controllable.

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.

I'll start learning German when they remove genders from objects and start pronouncing numbers in the correct order.

Sunk uu for trawelling wiss Deutsche Bahn AG

And one of the flaws of written English is that it has no spoken equivalent, haha!

People in Germany tend to prefer English if they figure out you're better at it, even.

It's a fun text, but let's be real; There is absolutely no possiblity of German being the official language of the European Union. Those of us in Europe who communicate across borders do so in English, not German.

If that intrigues you, you should perhaps watch this, or follow the guy in general

https://youtu.be/UAI3g6zVyAI

Reminds me of an old joke:

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

This is awesome. Would like to try this with Anglish (https://anglish.org/wiki/Anglish) to make a true English English.

Wow, I had never actually heard of that!

Or Uniscript!

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!

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)

Spoken English and written English are two different languages that have different features and different design flaws.

"Cogito, ergo dum."

Yes I meant that. My auto correction fucked it up.

🤔 when I see this: do you mean "Ubi est"?

My first sentence was: "Marcus silvam currit." 😂

I know the first few sentences from the first lection of my first Latin book

Ubi est Quintus? Quintus in hortus est. Quinte, Quinte, Caecilia clamat"

That basically all I remember.

😂😂😂 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. 🤭

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)

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.

No more long-winded politicians. Their arms will get tired too fast. And, no more edgy podcasts, because no podcasts will be possible.

The national language of China, the one virtually every Chinese person means if they say "Chinese". Mandarin.

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.

Which Chinese?

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.

>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.

We would be the badass of the world.

I root for Spanish! Creating a bridge with my Latino friends and thus upsetting the US at the same time.

At least quite a small proportion. And English is just one of the two official languages.

Oh right, Malta too :)

True! Obviously forgot. At least quite a small proportion. And English is just one of the two official languages.

It's no language of the EU (at least for now)

Ireland.

Ireland?

Could you explain why? Is there something about the language that makes it cool?

Yeah but Arabic is much cooler than English.

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.

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.

What exactly is the point? Most people in Europe speak at least a little English, a ton of people in India speak English, Arabic is completely alien to Europe. There is no advantage to Arabic over English.

The point of speaking Arabic would be to have the same language as North Africa and Arabia. And once Europe speaks Arabic, neighboring countries like Turkye, Iran or Pakistan and India could see the benefit in joining.

This doesn't mean that those countries become part of the EU. It would just create a huge zone with a single language which has its own advantages.

>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.

This suggestion is at least original :p

But I think we should make our new lingua franca a generous gesture to the world: we should find some language only still spoken by one old woman in some remote village, give her a list of words to translate and have that be the basis for our new federal European conlingua franca!

Nobody in Europe wants Iran or India to join.

Also, most Iranians apeak Persian, not Arabic.

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.

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.

What's ~~difficult~~ horrible about it?

Born in French Basque Country, had to learn Basque, it was horrible. Please don't.

@mikelgs@lemmy.eus @Allartean@lemmy.eus @Txopi@lemmy.eus are there good resources online for learning Basque?

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.

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. 😅

FYI Euskadi is a region of Spain that doesn't include all Basque-speaking territories. The language is Euskera.

Also, there is a Basque lemmy instance! lemmy.eus

Albanian would also fit your criteria as it's also completely different from everything else and fucking strange at the same time.

Basque it is!

Nope. Basque is considered a language isolate, not related to any other language.

Wikipedia – Basque 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!

Nope, it's an isolate.

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.

Basque might be the most neutral language of them all, right? Does it have a connection with any other European language?

True

As long as nobody is forced to learn it with a tank pointed at their house.

Nah, that would take the last bit of joy out of the German political system's misuse of the EU commission as a toxic waste dump for politicians who have become too bad for domestic use.

As a German, I would not want German to become a language of communication within Europe. The comparative political power of Germany within the EU is already too high, smaller Eastern and Southeastern EU members already have had to form alliances like Visegrad.

Ireland being the only country with English as major language within the EU makes English actually a more neutral language than languages of the populous countries. One could call it European English.

---

_Maybe Sámi languages, Basque and Maltese could come together and form the most distinct language that is most neutral? /s_

Germany, Spain, and France didn't get it done in the 70 some years since the WWII, so my estimation of that changing is quite low. I think France is too chauvinistic to accept German due to its history and what the language sounds like. Spanish and French are too similar and France would again consider its language superior once again 😅

Now to convert everybody, not so easy ;-)

It could be done with heavy investments in education across the EU. It would have to be for all citizens and not just schools for <20. Adding it to every EU country's list of national languages would also help adoption, as government media would have to be broadcast in them all. If the EU were serious, it could happen within 20 years, I reckon.

German would be nice.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yep. I always liked the idea of a conlang, but there's nothing stopping language change with them.

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.

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.

You're welcome.

Thank you so much I joined there and it’s my main account now. Everyone is so nice. I hope you have a great week. :)

Try the server: Feddit.org, there are some groups in German.


But it could be worse: "Czech, Slovak and Rusyn: *Masculine animate*, *Masculine inanimate*, *Feminine*, *Neuter* (traditionally, only masculine, feminine and neuter genders are recognized, with [animacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animacy "Animacy") as a separate category for the masculine)."

😳

It's definitely "der Joghurt" tho.

fite me

a ship/boat is female (called “she”), while nature is also feminine (often personified as “Mother nature”).

This isn't gender though, this is just personification. The thing about grammatical gender is that it is \*not\* personification. For instance, Germans don't view a table has having some kind of male quality, nor do the French view a table as being somehow female.

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”).

!Liz Lemon meme captioned: I want to go to there

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.

The wrong use of "der/die/das" in German does not really bother. Everyone will understand the sentence if it's done wrong. Since there is no rule to be derived as to how to use the article correctly, you simply have to learn it with the word itself like in other languages, too. (Why is a car a "female" in French? "La voiture" - I won't ever understand, also in Swedish: "en" or "ett" words eg. "vatten" .) There are some rules in German, like ending on "-er" is often a "male" word, but not consistent... It's only a clue. But sometimes it doesn't matter at all: "der Joghurt", "die Joghurt", "das Joghurt" - all genders are correct, so just try. 😂

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.

I’m learning German now and it’s insanely logical. I’m angry people dissuaded me as a kid from learning German. I truly love the language and Germans are also very kind.

Side note: are there any German communities on Lemmy you know of? I’d like to join. I’m a fan of Staiy and Spacefrogs.

I've heard a bit recently about how a lot of what Feynman told his fanboy writer were simply lies.

I feel like that's just a tall tale that Feynman told the author, like most of those stories

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.

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.

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.

As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, German was easier.

Consistent spelling and pronounciation make a massive difference.

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.

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.

but because it's a relatively easy language

I literally cried learning English as a kid lol

it's a relatively easy language

I don't know about that part. The orthography at least is wild.

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)

a relatively easy language.

Counterpoint:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ69ny57pR0

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.

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.

You still need to know most of the common characters, otherwise you can't actually read the language.

Depends. They have six cases, which is standard for a lot of indogermanic languages, and their declension is mostly consistent. I never learned German as L2, but I imagine the fact that in German cases are not clearly marked on the noun but by the combination of article and noun and that we use two different but very similar marking systems depending on context as utter nightmarish for L2 learners.

>Their case system is horrific.

More so than German?

That's gonna take a while

French was replaced within 60-80 years. Such change isn't fast, unless forced. However, I don't know how it could be forced. We aren't in a feudalistic system anymore and EU interests are heavily influenced by an English-speaking upper class.

And I rather doubt that Europe's Germanic-speaking countries will stop using English as a lingua franca anytime soon, it's just too easy to learn for them compared to any other possible candidate.

Try this.

Let's hope it's not going to be Russian anytime soon.

One can only hope, not only because of the implications, but also because the language is very complicated IMO. Their case system is horrific.

The Chinese writing system probably isn't so bad with predictive text entry (perhaps even better than English) 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 English language proficiency.

Also English vocab borrows from all around the world. That gives a lot more flexibility for word choice than a language like Esperanto.

Yeah, of course, not impossible, but we won't change from it just because. There would have to be a real reason, like as you say, crazy technology advancements or an insane apocalypse makes its widespread use die out.

People have never been this connected, so it's not going to change anywhere near as easily as it has in the past, is my point.

Never say never. Many things can change. English became the lingua franca in a single generation. Someone born in the 50s is old enough to remember a different lingua franca.

The US could align itself with Russia and create such animosity that people not only eschew its products but also the language. Right-wingers could get so much power and become so radical that they demand English be abolished as it tarnishes their own language. China could swoop in, nuke Western powers, and establish a new world order with Mandarin as the world language. An unexpected geological event could pollute the skies and seas in and around Europe, force massive emigration to Africa and Asia, and African governments could unite to declare Arabic, Swahili, and Zulu as the main languages of Africa for all to learn. Brain to computer interfaces might become so widespread that an intermediate and more practical, universal brainwave language is used instead of English (see Gibberlink for inspiration).

Look at how we are communicating. This is why it won't change again. The world wasnt connected like it is now.

English isn't going anywhere. It's too embedded now.

That's what French was until the second world war changed everything.

but English is mostly derived from it anyway

IMO English is more Germanic than Latin. There's certainly a lot of latin/french loanwords, but that's true for all other Germanic languages, too (even if to a somewhat lesser degree). Romance languages like French and Italian are actually derived from Latin and they are a lot different from English but fairly similar to each other (especially Italian, Spanish and Portuguese).

English is Germanic, so it's a pointless change. Latin would be cool I guess, but English is mostly derived from it anyway, just simplified.

English isn't going anywhere. It's too embedded now.

Latino sine flexione was an interesting proposition.

Almost all languages have a very big number of words derived from Latin or French. For example Polish, which is a slavic language, has so many of Latin or French rooted words.

Esperanto apart, I think that German should be the language od Europe, because is it simply the biggest language of the EU. It is also precise. Ofc it could get simplified, because for many der/die/das is too complicated or it is too much of a hustle to remember. German could get more logical with them and then it should be no problem for everyone.

We could also think about regianal lingua-francas. For example, it could be this way that in the region of romance languages, everyone would speak French, in the region of germanic - German and in the region of slavic - Polish. Simply the biggest languages in a given region.

The funniest one but also kind of interesting would be Latin. #useLatin

This is not such a big advantage because of the way words are constructed, by gluing words together. So there are fewer words to learn to have the same vocabulary.

I like the idea. My only issue with esperanto are its heavy influence by romance languages

A substantial majority of its vocabulary (approximately 80%) derives from Romance languages, but it also contains elements derived from Germanic, Greek, and Slavic languages

That gives Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and probably a few other countries quite a leg up. But, with influence from other languages, it would probably diversify its vocabulary (at least I hope so).

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?

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 not possible to please everybody so I vote for Basque and pleasing nobody.

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.

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.

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.

The Year of Esperanto is finally upon us! Bonan Matenon, Europe!

English has a blend of Germanic and Romantic features, which is nice for Europe, and no inflections to memorise, which is nice in addition. 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.

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.

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.

English is mostly used in commercial now, changing it would be costly and you would need the commitment of many others people to accept a new change in how to approach the world or just Europe, it's a tipe of commitment I doubt people would be willingly to accept.

Logical thinking I would think English should stay. It is by far the most known foreign language in Europe.

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.

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 too easy to learn for them compared to any other possible candidate.

Let's hope it's not going to be Russian anytime soon.

Something like Esperanto would be a nice alternative for the EU, though. Maybe there's other artificial languages that are even better? I'm not well-versed in this topic.

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

I'm too lazy to learn another language. Pick from English and Polish, alright?

Isn't the new official EU language irish English?

I speak english with heavy german accent, can this be the ligua franca?

let's all switch to Sumerian.

Yes. It's easy and already established. There is no reason to change it.

We should start using Toki Pona.

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.

Latinam magnam iterum faciamus. 😎 🥂 🧐

It's gonna be Chinese whether y'all like it or not.

But what instead? Spanish? German? Esperanto?

@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.

They should just stick with speaking American.

/Dodges shoes and runs away

Given how western society is doing, Mandarin might not be a terrible call.

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.

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.

G'day from Australia, please don't cut our borderless monolingual Island off. Kiwi's probably feel similar too.

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. 😂

English is good for the reasons pointed out. Also: It's no language of the EU (at least for now) so no country gets an edge over the others which should be considered too. (I'm a native German speaker)

Anything but english or french. Yes, I'm willing to put up even with brainfuck as a spoken language

Lojban! Though esperanto maybe is more reasonable.

As another person said, this is bad use of terminology. Lingua franca is decided by the people through natural use, not by governance.

I'll laugh my ass off if it's French, I'll really have had the bilingual easy mode languages if that happens.

Would be great to switch to mandarin. /s for all you humourless.

Two views on what language to chose:

The language most spoken in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_speakers_in_Europe

The language most spoken worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

So it looks like it might be either German, Spanish or French, depending on how you would assess it. No surprises there.

Now to convert everybody, not so easy ;-)

I propose Icelandic

Yes, cause many people do speak "broken" english and its compared to french or other languages easy to learn.

I wanted to learn French for a long time now. Would be a great motivation

Let's switch to (a) sign language.

It never was 😹😹😹😹😹

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.

Yes, next!

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.