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Languages come and go, up until WWI, French was the global language. Only 50 years ago, knowing Russian was a massive asset and the language reached a lot of co

Languages come and go, up until WWI, French was the global language. Only 50 years ago, knowing Russian was a massive asset and the language reached a lot of countries. Now English is the undisputed main one but there's indeed no guarantee it will stay that way, who knows what the future will be made of.

icebraining 9y ago
My parents' generation never used French to the same degree that we use English today, though. Its marketing machines (such as Hollywood) are tremendous.
- Tharkun 9y ago
  English language cultural exports are a large part of it, but so is the internet. I could speak/read/write English years before taking English classes in school. IRC and bulletin boards were largely to blame for that, much more so than movies/TV. I suppose kids these days have access to online content in whatever their native language is, but when I was growing English was the only option.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    English is like Facebook, it has a huge network effect now, making it hard for people to leave, even if they want to.
    - dep_b 9y ago
      Facebook has no use. No real penalty to leave it. Speaking English has a real economic impact
- paganel 9y ago
  In these parts of the world (Romania, Eastern-Europe, granted, a very Francophile country back in the day) middle-class people were regularly using French as the means of personal communication in the inter-war period. Just recently I’ve seen a post-card sent by a Romanian husband to his Romanian wife from a Romanian seaside resort sometime around 1930 which was written entirely in French. Lots of first names were also being French-ified for written informal communication, like the Romanian Gheorghe being changed into the French Georges. Once the communists came to power after WW2 almost all of that vanished, partly because the newly arisen middle-classes were not as “cultured” as the inter-war middle-class (even though knowing French was still seen as you being “an intellectual”, so to speak). Once the communists fell and capitalism took over English sort of became lingua-franca for business communication, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any people using it for personal communication the same as they were using French before WW2. Not trying to refute your observation or anything, which I find entirely correct, just wanted to add a small piece of language trivia.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Oh, no doubt about that; in Portugal our middle and upper classes were knee deep in French language and culture. One of our best writers wrote a lengthy text humorously complaining that "Portugal was a country translated from French". But this was still a small minority, even if influential, and even there actually knowing how to speak French wasn't universal.
- realusername 9y ago
  If your parents are from Europe, there's a good chance that all the administrative papers (including driving licence) were available in French and a lot of the main buildings would have French signs at that time. Just look at the old train station of Sofia for example: https://24timezones.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_0033.jpg https://24timezones.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_0033.jpg, the new one has English instead of French now.
lucozade 9y ago
> French was the global language It wasn't, it was just the primary language for diplomacy. Other languages were the de facto standard for other things e.g. English for maritime usage, German for science and maths. What's unusual about the current situation is that English dominates in the fields that have the most global reach: international trade, music/film/TV and technology. This is almost exclusively due to US hegemony in these fields for the last 70 odd years. What is also unusual about the current situation is how quickly things can change on a global scale. As such, I also don't see any reason to believe that English will dominate indefinitely. But I also see no reason why we'll move to another single, hegemonic language. Dominant languages might split by function again or special purpose languages may spring up. I see embryonic versions of the latter in my children's electronic communications.
- pimmen 9y ago
  Yes, this is something I think will be more likely; English might lose its grasp of area A to one language and lose area B to another language. I don't think we'll see one national language dominate again for a long time because this is a globalized post-industrial world, I don't think we'll see the rapid transformation of just one part of the world like the 19th and 20th century again.

icebraining 9y ago

My parents' generation never used French to the same degree that we use English today, though. Its marketing machines (such as Hollywood) are tremendous.

Tharkun 9y ago
English language cultural exports are a large part of it, but so is the internet. I could speak/read/write English years before taking English classes in school. IRC and bulletin boards were largely to blame for that, much more so than movies/TV. I suppose kids these days have access to online content in whatever their native language is, but when I was growing English was the only option.
- carlmr 9y ago
  English is like Facebook, it has a huge network effect now, making it hard for people to leave, even if they want to.
  - dep_b 9y ago
    Facebook has no use. No real penalty to leave it. Speaking English has a real economic impact
paganel 9y ago
In these parts of the world (Romania, Eastern-Europe, granted, a very Francophile country back in the day) middle-class people were regularly using French as the means of personal communication in the inter-war period. Just recently I’ve seen a post-card sent by a Romanian husband to his Romanian wife from a Romanian seaside resort sometime around 1930 which was written entirely in French. Lots of first names were also being French-ified for written informal communication, like the Romanian Gheorghe being changed into the French Georges. Once the communists came to power after WW2 almost all of that vanished, partly because the newly arisen middle-classes were not as “cultured” as the inter-war middle-class (even though knowing French was still seen as you being “an intellectual”, so to speak). Once the communists fell and capitalism took over English sort of became lingua-franca for business communication, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any people using it for personal communication the same as they were using French before WW2. Not trying to refute your observation or anything, which I find entirely correct, just wanted to add a small piece of language trivia.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Oh, no doubt about that; in Portugal our middle and upper classes were knee deep in French language and culture. One of our best writers wrote a lengthy text humorously complaining that "Portugal was a country translated from French". But this was still a small minority, even if influential, and even there actually knowing how to speak French wasn't universal.
realusername 9y ago
If your parents are from Europe, there's a good chance that all the administrative papers (including driving licence) were available in French and a lot of the main buildings would have French signs at that time. Just look at the old train station of Sofia for example: https://24timezones.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_0033.jpg https://24timezones.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_0033.jpg, the new one has English instead of French now.

lucozade 9y ago

> French was the global language It wasn't, it was just the primary language for diplomacy. Other languages were the de facto standard for other things e.g. English for maritime usage, German for science and maths. What's unusual about the current situation is that English dominates in the fields that have the most global reach: international trade, music/film/TV and technology. This is almost exclusively due to US hegemony in these fields for the last 70 odd years. What is also unusual about the current situation is how quickly things can change on a global scale. As such, I also don't see any reason to believe that English will dominate indefinitely. But I also see no reason why we'll move to another single, hegemonic language. Dominant languages might split by function again or special purpose languages may spring up. I see embryonic versions of the latter in my children's electronic communications.

pimmen 9y ago
Yes, this is something I think will be more likely; English might lose its grasp of area A to one language and lose area B to another language. I don't think we'll see one national language dominate again for a long time because this is a globalized post-industrial world, I don't think we'll see the rapid transformation of just one part of the world like the 19th and 20th century again.