Before English became more common, yes — French was the main “Lingua Franca” in the western world. There have been attempts to create an alternative language t

Before English became more common, yes — French was the main “Lingua Franca” in the western world. There have been attempts to create an alternative language that would not heavily favor or disfavor any speakers of any natural human language, but they haven’t gotten a lot of traction. Look up “Esperanto”. Prior to French, I think it probably was Latin. But that’s still the western world. But in the Eastern world? I don’t know what the primary language was before Mandarin, which itself was created only relatively recently because the ruling party didn’t like people using Cantonese and they wanted one unified language that they could force on everyone in the country.