12 ms·
The key point surely is that English is a living language that is adapting constantly to reflect a world culture as it develops. Plus there is a great body of
by bdfh42 15y ago
The key point surely is that English is a living language that is adapting constantly to reflect a world culture as it develops.
Plus there is a great body of existing English speakers in Europe matched by qualified teachers in most secondary schools.
There might be cultural objections in parts of Europe to adopting the language of another country but in reality - English is already the dominant business language.
Having said all of that it would be sad if other European languages were not maintained - you can say things in (for example) French that you just can't say in English - well not without a lot more words and it still would not be quite right. French is the second language of our family but I am sure this is true for all other languages.
- mhd 15y agoAnd a while back, French was the language of international diplomacy, Latin the language of science and mathematics, Italian for music. An argument could be made for all of them. Probably even for German, as it has a lot of native speakers in Europe. I don't think anything will remove English from its throne as the de facto "lingua franca", but I think the chance of making it a true, unified de jure version is about as unlikely as seeing Esperanto seated there. And I don't quite get the "key point". We're not talking about Latin here, updating Esperanto shouldn't pose a problem. Although it's more likely to be in the French style, with a central committee.