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?
Esperanto is a nice variant: it is much more adequate that any of those chaotically evolved “natural” languages plus nobody would have an unfair advantage just because of being lucky to be born in the English speaking country.
I like the idea. My only issue with esperanto are its heavy influence by romance 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).
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
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.
That’s what French was until the second world war changed everything.
Look at how we are communicating. This is why it won’t change again. The world wasnt connected like it is now.
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).
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.
I wouldn’t say it changed easily, but fair point.
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).
Latino sine flexione was an interesting proposition.
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.