There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?

  • atro_city@fedia.ioOP
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    23 days ago

    I like the idea. My only issue with esperanto are its heavy influence by romance languages

    A substantial majority of its vocabulary (approximately 80%) derives from Romance languages, but it also contains elements derived from Germanic, Greek, and Slavic languages

    That gives Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and probably a few other countries quite a leg up. But, with influence from other languages, it would probably diversify its vocabulary (at least I hope so).

    • vesi@lemm.ee
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      23 days ago

      Almost all languages have a very big number of words derived from Latin or French. For example Polish, which is a slavic language, has so many of Latin or French rooted words.

      Esperanto apart, I think that German should be the language od Europe, because is it simply the biggest language of the EU. It is also precise. Ofc it could get simplified, because for many der/die/das is too complicated or it is too much of a hustle to remember. German could get more logical with them and then it should be no problem for everyone.

      We could also think about regianal lingua-francas. For example, it could be this way that in the region of romance languages, everyone would speak French, in the region of germanic - German and in the region of slavic - Polish. Simply the biggest languages in a given region.

      The funniest one but also kind of interesting would be Latin. #useLatin