Given how western society is doing, Mandarin might not be a terrible call.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Having a big economy who's inhabitants never have to invest time into learn another language is a huge advantage for this economy. It's not a level playing field. Today there is no reason to still support English. In Europe we should use Esperanto or another easy to learn equivalent.
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G'day from Australia, please don't cut our borderless monolingual Island off. Kiwi's probably feel similar too.
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Ja, warum nicht Deutsch? Deutsch ist in Europa sehr weit verbreitet und wird von vielen Sprechern auch als Zweitsprache gesprochen. 😉
So, why is it English and not German? Because immigrants in the US decided to speak English. And there are so many people who can understand at least a few words in English. But as a German I'd prefer German, too. It is spoken by many Europeans.
Je suis désolé, chers Français, mon français est trop mauvais pour que je recommande que cela soit recommandé comme la principale chose européenne. 😂
Pardonneh muah, ish speake nest par les languages forrinée. Toot le mond ist speeking mine sprackgghe so varoomm you speekeh anything else? Ish not geunderstand.
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Is this some kind of ragebait? I speak French but if you look at the attitude that the French have towards their language and compare that to their average commandment of the English language, why should we do that to a whole continent?
If you ask me people in the EU should be raised bilingually and learn English from kindergarten on. All administration and official stuff should be bilingual. That would be a way for the EU to remain competitive. But no, we rather go down the Nazi route, way to go.
English is good for the reasons pointed out. Also: It's no language of the EU (at least for now) so no country gets an edge over the others which should be considered too. (I'm a native German speaker)
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Would be great to switch to mandarin. /s for all you humourless.
Lojban! Though esperanto maybe is more reasonable.
Anything but english or french. Yes, I'm willing to put up even with brainfuck as a spoken language
TIL brainfuck is a thing. The stuff people come up with 🤣
As another person said, this is bad use of terminology. Lingua franca is decided by the people through natural use, not by governance.
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Two views on what language to chose: The language most spoken in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_speakers_in_Europe The language most spoken worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
So it looks like it might be either German, Spanish or French, depending on how you would assess it. No surprises there. Now to convert everybody, not so easy ;-)
Germany, Spain, and France didn't get it done in the 70 some years since the WWII, so my estimation of that changing is quite low. I think France is too chauvinistic to accept German due to its history and what the language sounds like. Spanish and French are too similar and France would again consider its language superior once again 😅
Now to convert everybody, not so easy ;-)
It could be done with heavy investments in education across the EU. It would have to be for all citizens and not just schools for <20. Adding it to every EU country's list of national languages would also help adoption, as government media would have to be broadcast in them all. If the EU were serious, it could happen within 20 years, I reckon.
As a German, I would not want German to become a language of communication within Europe. The comparative political power of Germany within the EU is already too high, smaller Eastern and Southeastern EU members already have had to form alliances like Visegrad.
Ireland being the only country with English as major language within the EU makes English actually a more neutral language than languages of the populous countries. One could call it European English.
Maybe Sámi languages, Basque and Maltese could come together and form the most distinct language that is most neutral? /s
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I'll laugh my ass off if it's French, I'll really have had the bilingual easy mode languages if that happens.