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The phrase lingua Franca is a great example of why English is the most international language in the world. It’s because of its ability to absorb from different

The phrase lingua Franca is a great example of why English is the most international language in the world. It’s because of its ability to absorb from different languages. That phrase is as English as the word tomato today.

somethingsaid 4y ago
The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. Lingua Franca is a phrase in the most dominant language 2000 years ago, about the most dominante language 1000 years ago, used in the dominant language now. All of those languages used tons of loanwords as well. Someday Mandarin or Hindu may become the most dominant and they will use loanwords, and phrases from those languages will slip into English speech. But those changes won’t be because English in unique in some way, it will be because that’s how languages work.
- kartoolOz 4y ago
  Hindu - is someone who practices Hinduism and identifies as such, its not a language, that's Hindi.
  - somethingsaid 4y ago
    Sorry, my bad. I should have double checked. Thanks for pointing it out.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. This isn't true. English is easily the most-spoken 2nd language in the world, and it's not just because of Anglophone nation power, it's because English is an easily-learned language. I live in Japan, and while Japanese borrows a lot of foreign words (mostly from English), it's not ever going to become dominant because it's just too hard to learn. It's the same with Chinese. Any language that requires you to learn thousands of glyphs just to be fluent in the written version isn't going to go far worldwide compared to a language that uses 26 (and shares those with a large array of other languages). English is a uniquely simple language to learn compared to the languages of other powerful nations (Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German); some of those have extremely baroque writing systems (or simply unique and different, for Cyrillic), and all of them have very complicated grammar rules. By contrast, any idiot can learn a little basic English quickly and speak it well enough to be understood, even if it's technically incorrect.
  - irrational 4y ago
    > it's because English is an easily-learned language The only way you could possibly believe that is because you are a native speaker and didn’t have to learn it as a second language. English is notorious for being difficult to learn. Especially the abomination of our written language. Try learning Spanish to see what a truly easily-learned language looks like.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Spanish has much more complexity: complicated verb conjugation, gendered nouns, etc. English has no gender at all, and very little conjugation, and what conjugation it has is simple, except for a handful of words that it inherited from German. English isn't "notorious" for being difficult to learn at all. Citation needed. It's spoken all over the world. It's known for being difficult to become extremely proficient in, but it's very easy to learn to a basic level. It's much like learning to play guitar: any moron can learn to play some power chords on a guitar, and learning some more chords isn't that hard; playing decent-sounding songs with a handful of chords doesn't take long to learn. Playing at the level of a master like Malmsteen or Vai is something entirely different, and very few guitarists can reach that level of proficiency. It's much easier to learn enough on a guitar to play some simple song than on a piano, or worse something like a trombone for instance, but the guitar has a much greater range of ability (the difference between what a beginner can do and what a master can express with it) than most instruments.
      - irrational 4y ago
        > Spanish has much more complexity All this tells me is that you haven’t learned either Spanish or English as a second language learner. Spanish is incredibly consistent. Unlike English, once you learn the alphabet, you can read everything in Spanish correctly. > It's spoken all over the world. That has zero to do with how hard or easy it is to learn. There is absolutely no correlation. It is spoken all over the world because of British colonialism, American cultural exports, and it being the lingua franca. Not because anyone actually would choose to learn it if they had any other choice. Linguists categorize languages according to how hard they are for people to learn. Spanish is a category 1 language (the easiest to learn). English is a category 4-5 language (out of 5). “Is English the hardest language to learn? Given what we’ve already noted, you might be wondering if English is deserving of an equivalent ranking as one of the hardest languages to learn. Well, that too is a very subjective opinion. After all, people who are already fluent in languages that are related to English—particularly the Germanic and Romance language families—probably won’t find English to be that bad. However, English has a lot going on that could make it very frustrating to learn, even for a person fluent in one of these languages. Here are some of the commonly cited reasons that English is often considered to be a very hard language to learn: English is an unusual mix of Germanic and Romance languages. Many English words are taken directly from Latin and Greek without changing their form or meaning at all. The rules of grammar, pronunciation, and spelling in English are largely inconsistent and sometimes make no sense at all. For example, the past tense of ask is asked, but the past tense of take is took. Additionally, there are tons of exceptions to these rules that need to be memorized. For example, the beloved “I before E except after C” goes right out the window when we run into a word like weird. English is full of homophones that are pronounced identically but have different spellings and meanings, such as the words way and weigh. Often, English synonyms can’t be used interchangeably. For example, you often mean two different things when you say that someone is clever or when you say that someone is sly. The order of adjectives is often based on what “sounds right” rather than a formal set of rules. Often, native English speakers know the “correct” order of adjectives without even actually learning it. All of the above issues cause problems even for native English speakers when trying to use proper grammar and spelling. Needless to say, a new learner is likely to struggle quite a bit when trying to wrap their head around the ridiculous rules—or lack thereof—of English. We may not be able to say for certain that English is the hardest language to learn, but we think it definitely makes a serious claim for the title.” https://www.dictionary.com/e/hardestlanguage/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/hardestlanguage/
- ithkuil 4y ago
  Minor nitpick: lingua franca was not the language of the most dominant group like English is today. It was rather the name of a pidgin loosely named after the name of one of the people's on Europe but having almost no connection to it other than "franks" being the exonym for "western Europeans" as perceived by east Mediterranean people. Sabir was not the language used by the Franks.
re-thc 4y ago
English is the most international language because of war, expansion and domination. It could be any other language whose "countries" won. The major currency is USD... Most English speaking countries are of British origin... Non-English speaking countries trade with the largest partner(s), which are of English origins... I don't think it's the features of the language that are at play here.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > English is the most international language because of war, expansion and domination. That's one perspective. Another is trade. Trade is what caused my parents to learn English in the 40's and the 50's because it made them more employable.
  - re-thc 4y ago
    It goes back to the same origins. Why do you trade? There has to be something to gain. Often that is a result of this act of war, expansion and domination. Sure we can assume we just want to trade peacefully. History has said otherwise. We want to trade with the biggest trading partners and a lot of them grew by raiding others.
    - Quarrelsome 4y ago
      you may also war because you trade though. Opium war is a good example of that where the war is inspired by difficulties trading.
      - re-thc 4y ago
        Was that really the reason? What difficulty? They created this difficulty to find a chance to invade. There was a clear plan to create an addiction and even as it was banned to smuggle more and more into the country. A lot of things don't happen by chance. So does a certain country not actually have "weapons of mass destruction" etc.
        4y ago
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
you mean it's a great example of how something real can become a concept? Like we say "it was a bloody Sunday" to generically mean a massacre. "Lingua franca" was a language, did you know that? > That phrase is as English as the word tomato today. It has been at least since the XI century. Long before tomatoes were a thing in England. > English is the most international language in the world Which English? Because British and American English aren't. And probably right now Mandarin Chinese is even more business oriented than English.

somethingsaid 4y ago

The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. Lingua Franca is a phrase in the most dominant language 2000 years ago, about the most dominante language 1000 years ago, used in the dominant language now. All of those languages used tons of loanwords as well. Someday Mandarin or Hindu may become the most dominant and they will use loanwords, and phrases from those languages will slip into English speech. But those changes won’t be because English in unique in some way, it will be because that’s how languages work.

kartoolOz 4y ago
Hindu - is someone who practices Hinduism and identifies as such, its not a language, that's Hindi.
- somethingsaid 4y ago
  Sorry, my bad. I should have double checked. Thanks for pointing it out.
midoridensha 4y ago
>The phrase lingua Franca shows why languages become dominant, because they’re the one spoken by the most powerful group of people. It’s not because English is uniquely good at absorbing from different languages. Japanese uses a ton of foreign loanwords for things. So does Hindu. This isn't true. English is easily the most-spoken 2nd language in the world, and it's not just because of Anglophone nation power, it's because English is an easily-learned language. I live in Japan, and while Japanese borrows a lot of foreign words (mostly from English), it's not ever going to become dominant because it's just too hard to learn. It's the same with Chinese. Any language that requires you to learn thousands of glyphs just to be fluent in the written version isn't going to go far worldwide compared to a language that uses 26 (and shares those with a large array of other languages). English is a uniquely simple language to learn compared to the languages of other powerful nations (Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German); some of those have extremely baroque writing systems (or simply unique and different, for Cyrillic), and all of them have very complicated grammar rules. By contrast, any idiot can learn a little basic English quickly and speak it well enough to be understood, even if it's technically incorrect.
- irrational 4y ago
  > it's because English is an easily-learned language The only way you could possibly believe that is because you are a native speaker and didn’t have to learn it as a second language. English is notorious for being difficult to learn. Especially the abomination of our written language. Try learning Spanish to see what a truly easily-learned language looks like.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Spanish has much more complexity: complicated verb conjugation, gendered nouns, etc. English has no gender at all, and very little conjugation, and what conjugation it has is simple, except for a handful of words that it inherited from German. English isn't "notorious" for being difficult to learn at all. Citation needed. It's spoken all over the world. It's known for being difficult to become extremely proficient in, but it's very easy to learn to a basic level. It's much like learning to play guitar: any moron can learn to play some power chords on a guitar, and learning some more chords isn't that hard; playing decent-sounding songs with a handful of chords doesn't take long to learn. Playing at the level of a master like Malmsteen or Vai is something entirely different, and very few guitarists can reach that level of proficiency. It's much easier to learn enough on a guitar to play some simple song than on a piano, or worse something like a trombone for instance, but the guitar has a much greater range of ability (the difference between what a beginner can do and what a master can express with it) than most instruments.
    - irrational 4y ago
      > Spanish has much more complexity All this tells me is that you haven’t learned either Spanish or English as a second language learner. Spanish is incredibly consistent. Unlike English, once you learn the alphabet, you can read everything in Spanish correctly. > It's spoken all over the world. That has zero to do with how hard or easy it is to learn. There is absolutely no correlation. It is spoken all over the world because of British colonialism, American cultural exports, and it being the lingua franca. Not because anyone actually would choose to learn it if they had any other choice. Linguists categorize languages according to how hard they are for people to learn. Spanish is a category 1 language (the easiest to learn). English is a category 4-5 language (out of 5). “Is English the hardest language to learn? Given what we’ve already noted, you might be wondering if English is deserving of an equivalent ranking as one of the hardest languages to learn. Well, that too is a very subjective opinion. After all, people who are already fluent in languages that are related to English—particularly the Germanic and Romance language families—probably won’t find English to be that bad. However, English has a lot going on that could make it very frustrating to learn, even for a person fluent in one of these languages. Here are some of the commonly cited reasons that English is often considered to be a very hard language to learn: English is an unusual mix of Germanic and Romance languages. Many English words are taken directly from Latin and Greek without changing their form or meaning at all. The rules of grammar, pronunciation, and spelling in English are largely inconsistent and sometimes make no sense at all. For example, the past tense of ask is asked, but the past tense of take is took. Additionally, there are tons of exceptions to these rules that need to be memorized. For example, the beloved “I before E except after C” goes right out the window when we run into a word like weird. English is full of homophones that are pronounced identically but have different spellings and meanings, such as the words way and weigh. Often, English synonyms can’t be used interchangeably. For example, you often mean two different things when you say that someone is clever or when you say that someone is sly. The order of adjectives is often based on what “sounds right” rather than a formal set of rules. Often, native English speakers know the “correct” order of adjectives without even actually learning it. All of the above issues cause problems even for native English speakers when trying to use proper grammar and spelling. Needless to say, a new learner is likely to struggle quite a bit when trying to wrap their head around the ridiculous rules—or lack thereof—of English. We may not be able to say for certain that English is the hardest language to learn, but we think it definitely makes a serious claim for the title.” https://www.dictionary.com/e/hardestlanguage/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/hardestlanguage/
ithkuil 4y ago
Minor nitpick: lingua franca was not the language of the most dominant group like English is today. It was rather the name of a pidgin loosely named after the name of one of the people's on Europe but having almost no connection to it other than "franks" being the exonym for "western Europeans" as perceived by east Mediterranean people. Sabir was not the language used by the Franks.

re-thc 4y ago

English is the most international language because of war, expansion and domination. It could be any other language whose "countries" won. The major currency is USD... Most English speaking countries are of British origin... Non-English speaking countries trade with the largest partner(s), which are of English origins... I don't think it's the features of the language that are at play here.

jacquesm 4y ago
> English is the most international language because of war, expansion and domination. That's one perspective. Another is trade. Trade is what caused my parents to learn English in the 40's and the 50's because it made them more employable.
- re-thc 4y ago
  It goes back to the same origins. Why do you trade? There has to be something to gain. Often that is a result of this act of war, expansion and domination. Sure we can assume we just want to trade peacefully. History has said otherwise. We want to trade with the biggest trading partners and a lot of them grew by raiding others.
  - Quarrelsome 4y ago
    you may also war because you trade though. Opium war is a good example of that where the war is inspired by difficulties trading.
    - re-thc 4y ago
      Was that really the reason? What difficulty? They created this difficulty to find a chance to invade. There was a clear plan to create an addiction and even as it was banned to smuggle more and more into the country. A lot of things don't happen by chance. So does a certain country not actually have "weapons of mass destruction" etc.
      - 4y ago

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

you mean it's a great example of how something real can become a concept? Like we say "it was a bloody Sunday" to generically mean a massacre. "Lingua franca" was a language, did you know that? > That phrase is as English as the word tomato today. It has been at least since the XI century. Long before tomatoes were a thing in England. > English is the most international language in the world Which English? Because British and American English aren't. And probably right now Mandarin Chinese is even more business oriented than English.