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If english is not lingua franca...
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eriol33
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 11:05 AM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 11:05 PM #1 of 30
If english is not lingua franca...

Just some thought. English has been undisputedly gain status as world's lingua franca today, thanks to majority of english-speaking countries that won the WWII, the use of english has gained widespreaded use also due to western's culture export.

Anyway, sometime I imagine how the world goes if other language becomes a lingua franca. Perhaps you consider english, though gramatically easier than its other germanic families, its pronunciation is bizzarre and unexpectable. IMO, the use of engrish in east asian countries, for artistic purpose also marked implicit inferiority complex of asian people to western. I wonder if the story would be different if Chinese mandarin become world's lingua franca. Perhaps we will find situation where a lot of people use a lot of kanji everywhere.

In my opinion, perhaps Latin should be considered to return its status world's lingua franca once again, it was once de facto language in europe, though it's gramatically more difficult, it could help people to learn language other romance language better.

I know the question sounds silly, but I hope people would voice their opinion here, since our background and languages we mastered are different. Perhaps you have some languages in the mind that also suitable to become lingua franca? share your thought about it.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 11:58 AM #2 of 30
I think I read somewhere that Esperanto, a custom created language of sorts, would have been a good candidate for a global language due to the relative ease of structure concerning possessives, gender, sentence syntax, etc. Imho, it's pretty unpopular though, and I too would prefer something more well-known to have a possibility of spreading such as Latin. Might as well put that dead tongue to use if people are still being made to study it!

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eriol33
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 12:05 PM Local time: Jun 2, 2007, 12:05 AM #3 of 30
yes, I heard that one too. Interestingly, esperanto is being taught to introduce the students toward other language because the grammar actually combines several european languages. Most notably, the loanwords are heavily borrowed from either english, french, spanish, or german.

I think esperanto is quite promising, if we compare it to latin, perhaps we could learn it faster, but the question is, who wants to learn constructed language with small amount of speakers anyway? (I dont know whether it's part of curriculum in the countries where the language has been used widespread, such as France, Germany, or Spain)

I guess esperanto has long way to go to gain more importance in the future.

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You all think you got good deals, huh? Ha! You frugal and observant shoppers have more to learn.

None of that approaches this:
*censored for sake of signature size*
The Mr. Methane CD, purchased over ebay for .01¢. Yeah, free shipping. This guy performs all sorts of neat stuff, including the doot doot, doot doot from the Blue Danube.

Allow me to share a track from this CD. Here ya go.
I think he should have paid you .01¢ instead.
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 12:27 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 02:27 PM #4 of 30
Esperanto exists since the mid 70's or something, and never kicked in, like it or not, english it's the next global language, and the reason it's 'cause it's the least complicated language of then all, anyone can learn english with no effort. (theres a difference between learning and mastering, lemme clear that)

I also find that Latin should return, But the complexity of the language makes it very unlikely.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 12:34 PM #5 of 30
Having never taken Latin, I wouldn't know for sure, but I recall that Latin has free word order in terms of where subject, verb, object and whatever are placed, as long as you conjugate something in a particular way? I already found that confusing in itself, especially being already used to the syntax of English where word order is important.

In addition, I think a major language that doesn't have a complex syllabary or radically different alphabet would be a good candidate. Not like Japanese or Chinese, but moreso French, German, or Spanish. Then again, that's biased considering how I'm already accustomed to English and learning a new system would seem foreign. The point of view could easily be switched around to, say, a Russian Speaker.

I think that this also brings up the point of written vs. spoken.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 12:46 PM #6 of 30
In my opinion, perhaps Latin should be considered to return its status world's lingua franca once again, it was once de facto language in europe, though it's gramatically more difficult, it could help people to learn language other romance language better.
I read that Italy, centuries ago, used Latin - but every region of Italy spoke a different variation of it.

Dante Alighieri is credited with "standardizing" the Italian language - unifying it so everyone spoke the same form of Italian.

I'm guessing he did this for, you know, simplicity purposes, but I gather that the poor and unread would have a very hard time with Latin.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 02:51 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 01:51 PM #7 of 30
also marked implicit inferiority complex of asian people to western. I wonder if the story would be different if Chinese mandarin become world's lingua franca. Perhaps we will find situation where a lot of people use a lot of kanji everywhere.
I really hope no one has ever felt Asians, or any race, were inferior based on the difficulty of speaking and pronouncing English. And if it were the other way around I bet it'd be a disaster in comparison.

As it stands with English in the world I doubt anything's going to trump it anytime soon. Latin would be an interesting language but it'll probably remain with the professions that require a good understanding of it.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:03 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 01:03 PM #8 of 30
English didn't become the most necessary language simply because someone decided it so. Language spreads like a virus. You can't just say "Oh, let's use Latin!". I mean, the first and most obvious question is "Why?". Latin has not been widely used in centuries, it is lacking words necessary for communication in today's world. Almost no one can understand it except those that are educated in it (which is just about the single worst way to spread language). Language spreads when used by the masses.

Latin is linguistically interesting from a development standpoint but there is absolutely no reason why it should ever be used today.

If any other language should be used outside of English, it's Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people on the planet than any other and it's spoken by a wide variety of classes of people. Just like English spread because of global conquest, the only competitor English will have anytime soon is Chinese, because of globalized markets.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:16 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 09:16 PM #9 of 30
Japanese, for "the geeks will inherit the world".

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:26 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 12:26 PM #10 of 30
Esperanto exists since the mid 70's or something, and never kicked in
The first book on Esperanto, Lingvo internacia. Antaŭparolo kaj plena lernolibro, was published in 1887.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:32 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 02:32 PM #11 of 30
He must've been using Wikipedia as his source =O?

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:44 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 01:44 PM #12 of 30
A shift to latin wouldn't be terrible hard on some people, as English has a lot of loan words from Latin anyway (Kosmos, Deus, Rex, de facto, incognito, lingua franca(!), non sequitur, pax, pro bono, semper fidelis, valedictorium, etc.,) and most of these words are direct or near-direct translations.

However, as others have said, a language that could spread to the rest of the world would likely be Mandrain, as its spoken by more people anyway (But its only mainly in China, whereas English is world-wide).

Funny thing is though, even that English is a common language to use in Business & communication, that is no reason why people will use their native tounge otherwise. OO's signature about Star Wars is a good point: In the movies we see people talking various different unintelligable languages, but most, if not all seem to possess a knowledge of the Star-Wars equivalent of English. (I think the Robot C3PO said he has a database of over 6 million languages or something).

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:54 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 10:54 PM #13 of 30
A shift to latin wouldn't be terrible hard on some people, as English has a lot of loan words from Latin anyway (Kosmos, Deus, Rex, de facto, incognito, lingua franca(!), non sequitur, pax, pro bono, semper fidelis, valedictorium, etc.,) and most of these words are direct or near-direct translations.
Er, what. They aren't translations, they're Latin words, and are used in many countries, not only English-speaking ones. A direct English translation of, say, de facto would be in fact. A direct translation of rex is king. Of course, there are very many English words with Latin origins, but almost all of those you listed are just plain Latin, not loan words.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:56 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 02:56 PM #14 of 30
Not to mention "cosmos" is Greek.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 03:58 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 05:58 PM #15 of 30
The first book on Esperanto, Lingvo internacia. Antaŭparolo kaj plena lernolibro, was published in 1887.
Thanks for the cultural note, yet, correcting my statment then, since the 70's there are efforts to make an official language, with no luck, because the majority of people simply don't wan't to learn an language without any pratical use.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 07:45 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 05:45 PM #16 of 30
Without searching on the Internet for the answer, who can name the country with the most native English speakers after the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia?

(The answer surprised me.)

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 07:54 PM Local time: Jun 2, 2007, 01:54 AM #17 of 30
Without searching on the Internet for the answer, who can name the country with the most native English speakers after the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia?

(The answer surprised me.)
ooh, a quiz! I'm gonna have a guess at China.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 08:47 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 09:47 PM #18 of 30
If humans stopped being so goddamned lazy and just learned Telepathy this wouldn't even be an issue!

As said, Chinese would probably be the next global language if English lost it's place. That's a bit of a problem for me, though, because listening to Chinese is shit to my ears. I can't stand listening to it without cringing. Goddamn. Also, my Chinese 1 class starts this fall.

I think that Interlingua could be a good lingua franca. It's said that most adults can understand any basic Interlinuga sentence. It doesn't sound too bad, either.


Without searching on the Internet for the answer, who can name the country with the most native English speakers after the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia?

(The answer surprised me.)
Hmm... either Russia or Norway?

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Last edited by Kesubei; Jun 1, 2007 at 11:23 PM.
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 09:58 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 08:58 PM #19 of 30
India?
I have not a clue. I do know that in most of the Scandinavian countries, they speak English as well.

I would say Chinese could be the other 'dominant' language -- but it's vastly impractical from a global learning standpoint. Chinese is hard for Chinese people to learn. With English it's true there are a lot of words, but you only have to learn one alphabet. Even bare-bones 'functional' reading of Chinese requires the mastering of around 2,000 symbols -- and that's not saying you're totally literate in the language. Any language is easy in comparison to that. If you want to say that you don't have to know how to read it, the language is still difficult due to the extremely tonal nature of the speech -- more so than even other Asian languages.

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eriol33
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 10:01 PM Local time: Jun 2, 2007, 10:01 AM #20 of 30
India and... Netherlands maybe? I think Dutch is very open to other language, and most of them could speak flawless english.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?
You all think you got good deals, huh? Ha! You frugal and observant shoppers have more to learn.

None of that approaches this:
*censored for sake of signature size*
The Mr. Methane CD, purchased over ebay for .01¢. Yeah, free shipping. This guy performs all sorts of neat stuff, including the doot doot, doot doot from the Blue Danube.

Allow me to share a track from this CD. Here ya go.
I think he should have paid you .01¢ instead.
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Old Jun 1, 2007, 10:52 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 08:52 PM #21 of 30
The #5 country in the world with native English speakers is.........

Nigeria!

They didn't revert back to any old languages when Britain left in 1960, so English stuck and they have something like 4 million English native speakers.

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Old Jun 1, 2007, 11:10 PM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 09:10 PM #22 of 30
Er, what. They aren't translations, they're Latin words, and are used in many countries, not only English-speaking ones. A direct English translation of, say, de facto would be in fact. A direct translation of rex is king. Of course, there are very many English words with Latin origins, but almost all of those you listed are just plain Latin, not loan words.
Bah. The point I was trying to make was that there were a lot of english words with latin origins, as you said as well x_x

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Old Jun 2, 2007, 12:32 AM Local time: Jun 2, 2007, 12:32 AM #23 of 30
Bah. The point I was trying to make was that there were a lot of english words with latin origins, as you said as well x_x
There being plenty of English words with Latin origins, though, has nothing to do with how easy it would be for English speakers to learn Latin. English also has plenty of words with French origins, and still more with German origins. French and German have had larger and more direct influences on English than Latin. This influence is extended because French and German are still living languages and as such can loan out new words and expressions as needed.

This doesn't mean French and German are languages any English speaker can pick up with no problem, however. Both languages have conventions and rules that are different from English, which have to be learned and applied by minds that aren't programmed to use them naturally.

Trying to switch to Latin would run into these problems as well as the ones resulting from it being effectively dead.

While we're talking about French, there's a candidate right there. It has its own worldwide influence, and was Europe's lingua franca far more recently than Latin was.

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Old Jun 2, 2007, 01:15 AM Local time: Jun 1, 2007, 11:15 PM #24 of 30
This influence is extended because French and German are still living languages and as such can loan out new words and expressions as needed.
That point brings up an interesting question: How 'valid' would adding words to Latin be if it were done by Scholars? I mean, Language evolves and changes over time, but since its somewhat of a 'endangered' language, is there any sort of consortium on what can or cannot be added to the language? I know its an odd question but since English creates new words a lot, I wonder if the same could be said/done for older archaic languages like Latin or whatever.

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Old Jun 2, 2007, 01:36 AM Local time: Jun 2, 2007, 01:36 AM #25 of 30
Originally Posted by Dark Nation
but since its somewhat of a 'dead' language
Fixed that for you.

Latin, as a working language, doesn't exist anymore; nobody uses it in their everyday communication. Its legacy lives on in several languages that are directly descended from it, plus several more that have been influenced by it, and it still is used but the Latin language itself has been effectively dead for centuries. Adding the words needed to make it a workable language for everyday use in the 21st century, particularly for worldwide use, would require enough work to transform it into something other than Latin.

Maybe you should look at Greek, instead.

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