Can any language challenge English as a global lingua franca? Explain your thoughts down below.
As in lingua βfrancaβ implies the French language, not the English
I suspect most people wouldn't, for the reason that English is too far ahead already and that Esperanto doesn't have the typical country/culture/history/ethnic backing that most languages have, and doesn't have that many speakers. But I'm asking anyway to see other points of view and opinions.
Personally, I'd like to give it a try. I know it's really unlikely to happen. But I think that by having no country you can associate to it, by not being native to certain regions or peoples (only a thousand native speakers, out of 2 million total), and by being intentionally really easy and consistent, it makes speakers more equal and doesn't have the cultural biases that most languages have (it does draw mostly from other European languages, so, it's not as neutral as it could be, but you have to start somewhere).
English, on the other hand, even though it has many people from basically everywhere speaking it, still is mostly dominated by the biggest countries where it is the native language. So, if you try to find any information in English, you'll most likely end up in a US-American, British, Canadian, or Australian website. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not the level playing field Esperanto is (or tries to be).
Political language is medium of instruction (just some jargon made up for my project) so it includes the language of public services, education and so on. Iβve talked about how these lingua franca can be used to protect native languages by educating everyone in one arbitrary language with no cultural implications so that everyone can communicate but speak their own languages at home, like with English in many Indian states. Any thoughts or resources you could suggest that could help me compare English and Esperantoβs potential functionalities if this were used globally? Other than the obvious that English is actually spoken by an economically prestigious linguistic group globally.
And my god, the part where they show the dialect changes is kind of painful to read. It's just a list of speaking mistakes.
If I were to use the example of a business meeting, a lot of people will go to English as a neutral ground because it bridges linguistic gaps. However I would imagine that this gives an unfair advantage to those that speak English natively and could lead to a kind of "power imbalance" between partners.
How "neutral" do you think English is as a way of communication? Is it a kind of linguistic imperialism?
Lingua franca: a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
Most people learn a foreign language in order to speak to native speakers of that language. However, sometimes we end up in unexpected situations where we speak it with another fellow learner. This is extremely common with English, so I'm interested in hearing your stories about this happening with other languages.
I am asking one language to serve as a sort of Continental tongue of Asia learnt by everyone . The role that is played by English now . Of course it wonβt most likely happen in real life . But still .
I am envisioning a situation like the Philippines, or Indonesia. Enclaves of native English speakers (e.g. in especially white parts of Massachusetts) are okay.
200 years from now is a lot of uncertainty. Assume no radical global upheavals, e.g. runaway climate change, global nuclear war, the Singularity, etc.
e: By "native", I mean indigenous. See below.
I know itβs always been a popular second language in Eastern Europe and Central Asia but mostly due to geographical proximity. Was there a significant amount of Russian spoken in countries such as Cuba or Vietnam?
The facts are:
-Brexit will leave L1 English speakers as a very small percentage of the EU's population
-French and German are at least viable alternatives and French governments have historically made the promotion of the French language a priority to put the full weight of the country's power behind.
On the other hand...
-English is the global lingua franca and will remain so for the foreseeable future
-Even without Britain, English will still be the most widely spoken (including non-native speakers) language in the EU
I'd be especially interested to hear what Europeans think.
French was the lingua franca of the 1800βs and to be honest, that wasnβt that long ago if you think about it.
For those of us in our 20βs, our grandparents were our age during WW2 & their grandparents were alive during most of the 1800βs. French was spoken in France of course, in the Russian Empire, even in America as the Louisiana territory existed in the 1800βs. But something happened and gradually English became the lingua franca of the world.
What happened & when did this happen?
I dont mean to say it is the lingua franca, but it's a pretty widely used language. Which European language would you like to see in its place?
According to this data from [Forbes] (http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/21/want-to-know-the-language-of-the-future-the-data-suggests-it-could-be-french/#8ed714239331) :
French was lingua franca of the world to the point where all countries in Europe spoke French - even aristocrats in Imperial Russia spoke French. This [book] (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230597037_6#page-1) states that King Louis XIV (1600s) is responsible for the rise of French as the world's lingua franca as he demanded French replace Latin in Europe as the language of commerce, diplomacy, etc. French also remained the lingua franca of the world for centuries well into the late 19th century and early 20th century. It still remains the official language of the UN, the EU, the Olympics, and FIFA however it obviously isn't the lingua franca of the world anymore. Although it is still spoken over a wide area from France to Belgium, Switzerland, central Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Canada.
I want this discussion to follow the axiom "language diversity should be mantained". I don't really care if you don't think that to be the case. So "everyone should learn English as a first language and all other languages should be disregarded" is not going to be taken as a valid argument here. I might make a different CMV for that, but that's not what's being discussed in this CMV.
(Edit: I figured if I'm really asking you to change my view, I don't get to set that kind of conditions so forget about that)
I've seen a huge amount of posts/youtube videos/podcasts, etc. supporting these two ideas:
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The USA should stop forcing so much foreign language learning to its students.
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Non-English speaking countries should still teach English because it's beneficial for its population's economy.
The second point bothers me quite a lot.
My problem with it arises from the fact that doing so only worsens already existing problems of social and cultural inequality.
Why?
- Only the upper and middle classes are able to learn English. Jumping from a lower to an upper class is already quite difficult. If we were to impose a language barrier (as we are currently doing) the gap between the lower and upper classes would widen.
Learning a language takes a lot of time and effort. People from the lower classes usually can't afford to waste that much time learning a foreign language. Trying to teach everybody English only widens the gap even more for those who can't. I think all the effort many countries put into teaching their kids English should instead be put into making information available to them in their native language.
Let's look at my country, for example. Here we all have mandatory English classes in both middle and high school. Of course most people don't learn the language because as most of you who have taken forced classes on a foreign language it takes interest to learn a foreign language.
That leads to most jobs asking for a Cambridge certificate in English as a proof that you speak English. And, guess what? They cost money. While it's not too much, it's well beyond the reach of the lower classes.
In my country school and university are both free. The best university in the country according to most international institutions is the free public one. We even give our poorest students (those whose parents make less than US$ 2'000 a month) a scolarship for studying at university. Our poor students could have equal opportunities but th
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