Is English righfully the Lingua Franca of our times?

Do you believe that English is rightfully the Lingua Franca of our times?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 70.0%

  • No

    Votes: 3 30.0%
  • Total voters
    10
Aberdeen said:
As any reasonable person would conclude, it's almost impossible to accurately list all the words in a particular language. However, if you compare the size of an English and a Greek dictionary, you'll see that the English dictionary (if comprehensive) is much larger. And I find it strange that you talk about the English language "borrowing" words from German and French, since English was derived from a fusion of West German dialects with Norman French superimposed on it after the Norman conquest. And there's nothing strange about English borrowing from Latin, since Latin was the lingua franca of the Middle Ages, as well as being the precursor of French. Some words are borrowed from Greek because they express an idea readily - Greek is quite useful for some things but ill adapted for others, whereas English is flexible enough for any task, and if it needs a word it doesn't have, it simply borrows from another language. English is better able than some other languages to digest foreign words, which is one of the things that makes it such a useful language. And the simplified grammer also helps. I'm glad we don't still have all the cases that we originally inherited from German, for example.
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Aberdeen,

I like the approach that you have in the topic. You know I am not a linguist. I am just stating what I did in school. I do not think that the Greek dictionary fully reveals all the words that Greek language can create from its base. Some people talk about 6*10^6 entries, I am not sure though.
 
Every era has its dominant world language. The wheel turns. This is the era of English.

Be grateful that it's a language capable of producing verse like this, and that it can sound like this...

 
I wonder if Mandarin is capable of producing such beautiful poetry. Although in fact by the time the dominance of English is over, the world may have changed so much that the next big thing may not be what we might expect it to be.
 
Angela said:
Every era has its dominant world language. The wheel turns. This is the era of English.

Be grateful that it's a language capable of producing verse like this, and that it can sound like this...

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Is this Sherlock?
 
Lets face it, re poetry I think once you speak the lingo well, everyone can related deeply to his / their poetry, its not something that happens only in the English Language. Some interesting stuff out there in many different languages....only if you could understand it.
 
Maleth said:
...Chinese is the most spoken language but its insular, and Spanish and French could have been a great challenge and offered a huge resistance for change BUT just my opinion I find that English is becoming more and more acceptable even with all these great languages.
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Yes. Many of the other most frequently spoken languages, such as Hindi, Russian, and German are also fairly insular, having a home region of countries but being fairly uncommon outside of them. Spanish and French, two of the obvious contenders for a Lingua Franca, share with English the fact that they are widely spoken among people of many different backgrounds in many areas of the world. No country or ethnic group "owns" English any more than anyone "owns" Spanish or French.
 
Whats Lingua Franca ?
Just realised the Date, but nevertheless, I can say that most English people have difficulty understanding other regional English people, for instance I live in the North of England but whilst working in the South, The locals could not often understand my language/Dialect, I had to speak very slowly and differently to comunicate, and gain the understanding I intended. I worked along side a lad from Aberdeen in North East Scotland, and we could talk at normal speed and understand each other without any difficulties, but the Southern locals could not understand us at all when we spoke together and at our own normal pace using our traditional dialects and Language. At times our boss had to ask others what we were saying. Even when I write, it is very different from how I speak.

I believe English is the most dominant and recognised global language at this moment in time. English is the most used and spoken international travel contact, and comunication language with Flying, and Merchant shipping etc. English may not continue this way for long as it seems Spanish is overtaking English as the dominant language in The Americas, and a similar situation is with Chinese, both growing rapidly.
 
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English is widespread around the world because of the British empire (America, Canada, Africa, India, Middle East, south Asia, carried etc, but it only became widespread in Europe after ww2 thanks to American popular cultural influence and american/British music, movies etc. I don't think any other language could replace it for many decades yet as the Anglo countries dominate popular culture and produce popular culture that non Anglo countries seem unable to match
 
yes. english language has relatively simple grammar which makes it easy to learn
 
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