4 ms·

And yet easy enough for basically everyone in the world to learn. Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Russian was a huge

by Swizec 9y ago

And yet easy enough for basically everyone in the world to learn. Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Russian was a huge candidate as well. Wanna learn that? I’m a native Slavic speaker and I wouldn’t wish a Slavic language on anyone who needs to become fluent enough to do business. Spanish was (is?) a big candidate too, that one is about as hard as English i guess. Portuguese? I can’t tell how hard it is, but it sounds more difficult to me than Spanish. Arabic was a strong contender once upon a time as well. That to me seems very difficult to learn. Of course we could go for Chinese. I hear that’s easy to learn conceptually, but hard to learn how to speak properly. Ultimately we landed on English in part because of the cultural and historical dominance, and in part because it’s just easy enough for anyone to become fluent enough. The nice thing about it is that it steals language constructs and words so liberally from other languages that anyone can find something familiar to grab onto.

vslira 9y ago
I second this feeling. I'm not a native English speaker but I often see myself hoping that it becomes ever more prevalent. Unfortunately there's a lot of resistance to accepting it as the official universal language, not in small part due to the anti-multeralist stance of the major anglo nations. One can only hope Brexit doesn't make German a virtual necessity to deal with the EU in the long term.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  > One can only hope Brexit doesn't make German a virtual necessity to deal with the EU in the long term. The EU has had more than twenty official languages for many years, I don't think it is likely at all that this will suddenly change to one language. I also don't think there is any chance for English being removed, since it is the most widely understood language in the union (the UK being a member or not has no relevance to that).
  - germanier 9y ago
    Internally the EU uses almost only French, English, and (to a much lesser degree) German. Many documents are only available in French and English.
tuomosipola 9y ago
I have a feeling that the right timing of English-speaking political dominance in 19th and 20th century combined with global information technology boom has contributed a lot here. It could have been French (and in a sense was) if they had had movies and Internet earlier. To me English doesn't feel logical at times (maybe a subjective observation) but at least we all can agree that the ortography with its historical baggage is not optimal. Personally, I think the most helpful thing has been the cultural dominance of English language movies and TV series in my youth. Also, much of today's computer technology coming from the US, all that material is in English. It could have been any of those languages, because I don't strongly believe in that languages are intrinsically difficult to learn. They are just different. And typologically, English is quite distant from my native language.
- lucozade 9y ago
  I think your point about cultural dominance, and specifically youth culture, is the key one. I travel a fair bit and it still surprises me how often I hear English, usually lyrics, regardless of the local language. English isn't particularly logical. This is partly because it is a hodge-podge of Germanic and Latin roots. I think its also because it's so widely used. It's accepted a ton of vocab from around the world and usage seems to have a "natural selection" effect on grammar. I'm not sure I agree about French. It was the main diplomatic language before American hegemony but I'm not sure it ever really took off much as a second language. I actually think that German was the natural choice if things had turned out differently. The reason is that, in the 20s and 30s, German was the lingua franca of science and technology. Germany was also a pioneer in film. These were only just starting to dominate culture at that time and, without the upheaval of WWII, could easily have spread from there.
  - oblio 9y ago
    French did take off in many places. In Romania for example we even borrowed something like 20% of our current vocabulary from it. However English became popular in the age of mass literacy, mass transport mass media and the Internet. Huge expansion vectors for a language. Also English had multiple support points instead of 1 (France): UK, US, British colonies.
blattimwind 9y ago
> Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Or German, which was also a very widely internationally used language in science before the wars.

by Swizec 9y ago

vslira 9y ago

I second this feeling. I'm not a native English speaker but I often see myself hoping that it becomes ever more prevalent. Unfortunately there's a lot of resistance to accepting it as the official universal language, not in small part due to the anti-multeralist stance of the major anglo nations. One can only hope Brexit doesn't make German a virtual necessity to deal with the EU in the long term.

blattimwind 9y ago
> One can only hope Brexit doesn't make German a virtual necessity to deal with the EU in the long term. The EU has had more than twenty official languages for many years, I don't think it is likely at all that this will suddenly change to one language. I also don't think there is any chance for English being removed, since it is the most widely understood language in the union (the UK being a member or not has no relevance to that).
- germanier 9y ago
  Internally the EU uses almost only French, English, and (to a much lesser degree) German. Many documents are only available in French and English.

tuomosipola 9y ago

I have a feeling that the right timing of English-speaking political dominance in 19th and 20th century combined with global information technology boom has contributed a lot here. It could have been French (and in a sense was) if they had had movies and Internet earlier. To me English doesn't feel logical at times (maybe a subjective observation) but at least we all can agree that the ortography with its historical baggage is not optimal. Personally, I think the most helpful thing has been the cultural dominance of English language movies and TV series in my youth. Also, much of today's computer technology coming from the US, all that material is in English. It could have been any of those languages, because I don't strongly believe in that languages are intrinsically difficult to learn. They are just different. And typologically, English is quite distant from my native language.

lucozade 9y ago
I think your point about cultural dominance, and specifically youth culture, is the key one. I travel a fair bit and it still surprises me how often I hear English, usually lyrics, regardless of the local language. English isn't particularly logical. This is partly because it is a hodge-podge of Germanic and Latin roots. I think its also because it's so widely used. It's accepted a ton of vocab from around the world and usage seems to have a "natural selection" effect on grammar. I'm not sure I agree about French. It was the main diplomatic language before American hegemony but I'm not sure it ever really took off much as a second language. I actually think that German was the natural choice if things had turned out differently. The reason is that, in the 20s and 30s, German was the lingua franca of science and technology. Germany was also a pioneer in film. These were only just starting to dominate culture at that time and, without the upheaval of WWII, could easily have spread from there.
- oblio 9y ago
  French did take off in many places. In Romania for example we even borrowed something like 20% of our current vocabulary from it. However English became popular in the age of mass literacy, mass transport mass media and the Internet. Huge expansion vectors for a language. Also English had multiple support points instead of 1 (France): UK, US, British colonies.

blattimwind 9y ago

> Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Or German, which was also a very widely internationally used language in science before the wars.