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Lingua Franca | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 18 12 January 2014 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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The English language did not sweep the globe because of its characteristics but because of colonialism at the beginning and then because of the fact that the world superpower-the USA- is English-speaking.
more like one of the superpowers... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4052 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 18 12 January 2014 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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The following is nothing other than my personal opinion. There are numerous examples of Lingua Franca languages throughout history (and this includes Greek). My understanding of why local populations, or at least by parts of populations, adopt a Lingua Franca is that it is, quite simply, in their personal interest to do so. Personal interest can be driven by numerous factors: political, economic, religious, plain survival, or the wish to improve one's social status. It is a simple fact that regional and global ruling elites have never adopted Esperanto to communicate either amongst themselves, or with anyone else. Rather, irrespective of their mother tongue, they tend to adopt the existing "power-elite" alternatives (English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Arab, etcetera). As a result, there is very little incentive to learn Esperanto for those who seek to improve their status. I could be mistaken concerning the origins of the following adage, but I suspect that it is American, and I find that it summarizes the situation quite succinctly: Money talks, Bull$hit walks!
As a practical example, let us assume that a company establishes a new production facility in a foreign country, a country where, generally speaking, the locals do not have a good command of the language of the Head Office, from which the engineers, administrators, managers and other operational staff will be deployed. As it turns out, a small number of the local, newly-hired, production employees speak Esperanto, whereas another small number of the local, newly-hired, production employees speak the language of the engineers, administrators, managers and other staff that report to the Head Office. Who, amongst the newly-hired Production employees, will be designated as the Production Foremen (a position of higher social status and having greater economic value)? Will the group of employees that speak Esperanto be paid a premium for their linguistic skill? And, when all of this comes to pass, what will be the relative incentives to learn Esperanto as opposed to learning the language of the managers? This hiring and promoting process, with its attendant influence on local language-learning, will play out at least until the local population can supply qualified engineers, administrators, managers and other operational staff. However, they, too, will have to learn the language of the Head Office, at which point the Foremen will be permitted to be unilingual. I have witnessed this process, personally, on several occasions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3997 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 4 of 18 12 January 2014 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lingua Franca: language that people use to communicate with others when the two speakers are two different native languages.
Languages like English and French are common lingua francas. In many African countries French will be the link between speakers of the many local languages. In many parts of Europe English will be the language that the German will use to speak with the...Polish person, for example. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5541 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 5 of 18 12 January 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Did Esperanto succeed in becoming such a language?"
In a word, no. That may have been one of the goals that its creators had, but it did not become a lingua franca. A lingua franca is a language which serves as the default or dominant language in situations, cultures, organizations, and/or geographic locations in which not everyone's first language is the same. Historically Latin and [Ancient] Greek were the lingua franca in Greece and the Roman Empire. French was the lingua franca in Western Europe from the 17th through mid 20th centuries and is still the lingua franca in much of Africa. English is currently the lingua franca for international business, education (especially post-secondary education), and aviation (this is a big one). Mandarin is the lingua franca in China and MSA is in most Arabic speaking countries (note that Moderen Standard Arabic is a diglossic language). Hindi-Urdu is the lingua franca of much of India and Pakistan. Because of the sheer amount of industries, organizations, and situations (ie education) which use English as the lingua franca I think it could be argued that English is the lingua franca of the world though it could likely be easily argued that that will change eventually. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 18 13 January 2014 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian is still a lingua franca across several of the former Soviet states. German serves as a cross-border
language in the places where German-speaking territory meets "eastern" Europe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 7 of 18 15 January 2014 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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English is not as widely spoken as some might think, but it is certainly the current
holder to the lingua franca title. Such languages tend to be inevitably used if you want to connect to a wider audience. If they are not the original language, then they are translated into one. So the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, for example, because this had wider currency than either Latin or Aramaic, widely spoken though both were at the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3997 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 8 of 18 15 January 2014 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
It is hard estimating the number of native, second language, or foreign speakers (heck, it's hard even knowing how many PEOPLE are in a country), but some estimates put the number of native, second language, and foreign language speakers of English to be 1.5 billion, about 21% of the world population. Not bad. A quick way of answering how widely spoken a language is to say that if you were put in a random city of a random country, what language would you use in a life-threatening emergency? You would want a language that is spoken by a lot of people AND in a lot of countries. Mandarin is spoken by like 900 million native+second language speakers (relatively few foreign ones) but it is pretty much concentrated in one area mass. I would sure as heck pick English in such an emergency situation. Next time you are in a pickle, start speaking Esperanto and see what happens. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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