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?

  • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Plus English has influences from everywhere. In my oral abitur exam, I got stuck once or twice and made up words by anglicizing the pronounciantion of french words gaining extra points and impressed faces.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      4 days ago

      That works for almost all European languages. In one of his books Richard Feynman tells a story about when he went to Brazil and didn’t how to say “so” in Portuguese so he used “Consequentemente” by adapting Consequently and everyone was impressed with his fluency.

      • MBM@lemmings.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        I feel like that’s just a tall tale that Feynman told the author, like most of those stories

      • lime!@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 days ago

        there’s also a story about how he just decided to fire off nonsense phonemes at some visiting professor from some asian country because he thought it was funny and people were apparently impressed at his diction. i don’t think his perceived audience reactions should be taken at face value.

        • Comment105@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          3 days ago

          I’ve heard a bit recently about how a lot of what Feynman told his fanboy writer were simply lies.