Should English stay the lingua franca of Europe?
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?
Isn't the new official EU language irish English? I speak english with heavy german accent, can this be the ligua franca?
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!
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.
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.
Let's switch to (a) sign language.
No more long-winded politicians. Their arms will get tired too fast. And, no more edgy podcasts, because no podcasts will be possible.
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.
Basque might be the most neutral language of them all, right? Does it have a connection with any other European language?
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
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.
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)
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.
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
I propose Icelandic
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.
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.
let's all switch to Sumerian.
We would be the badass of the world.
Would be great to switch to mandarin. /s for all you humourless.
But what instead? Spanish? German? Esperanto?
I root for Spanish! Creating a bridge with my Latino friends and thus upsetting the US at the same time.
Yes. It's easy and already established. There is no reason to change it.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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)
They should just stick with speaking American.
/Dodges shoes and runs away
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 ;-)
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.
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.
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 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.