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Which world language? | ||
Tags: Lingua franca | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| nebojats Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 89 posts - 120 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Italian | Message 1 of 38 19 October 2010 at 8:56am | IP Logged |
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Hello!
I'm interested in learning languages which are widely understood, used as linguae francae (according to the thread, that's how you pluralize lingua franca!), and employed by international organizations. The following pop out to me as the top candidates: 1) English - Lots of native speakers, the go-to second language of the world. 2) Spanish - The most countries with majority speakers, accents generally intelligible. 3) Arabic - Second most countries with majority speakers, however divergent dialects. 4) French - Big second language, used in international orgs, losing out to English. 5) Russian - Big lingua franca, influence is declining though. 6) Mandarin - Biggest number of native speakers, very few countries. I'd love to hear what other users think about the strengths and weaknesses of these languages, and other languages if you can think of any. Keep in mind, I'm thinking of these languages in terms of how useful they would be in an international setting. Yes, I know "international setting" is sort of a hazy term. But this haziness means you can approach the topic from a variety of angles! Thoughts? Edit: Once again, since I feel like there might be some confusion, the factors to be focused on here are: lingua franca status, use in international organizations, and how widely understood a language is. Edited by nebojats on 20 October 2010 at 2:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 38 19 October 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
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First of all, I need to make my habitual "you're talking about Mandarin, not Chinese" remark. Many people don't count Mandarin as a "lingua franca" because it's mostly used in a single country. What they forget is that China is a huge country encompassing lots of different languages, and these people speak Mandarin with each other. A lingua franca is a language used to communicate when people don't speak each other's native languages, yeah? As I see it, it has nothing do do with national borders and everything to do with linguistic borders. And if you for a moment stop looking at the political borders of the PRC, you'll see that Mandarin is a very widely used lingua franca amongst lots of different people. Speakers of Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Uighur, Tibetan and many many other languages all use Mandarin as a lingua franca.
But as you're focusing on "International", that puts the national borders into view, which means Mandarin is hardly a competitor at all. You've got China, Taiwan and Singapore, basically. On the other hand, I hear Mandarin is on the rise in the UN. Anybody know more about that? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gray Newbie United States Joined 6037 days ago 32 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 3 of 38 19 October 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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A good place to start is probably the official languages of the UN: English, French,
Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese. Of course, with the latter two, lingua franca status really only applies to MSA and Mandarin, respectively. "Arabic" and "Chinese" are considered single languages mostly for political reasons rather than linguistic ones, since they both have dialects that are mutually unintelligible. After that, I would put in Portuguese, which is spoken on three continents and has more native speakers than French. And Esperanto, which while not spoken by a really large number of people, *is* spoken by at least one in over 100 countries, and those speakers are pretty much universally interested in spending time with other people who speak Esperanto (an advantage over, say, English, which is usually learned for economic rather than social reasons). You might also want to check out the wikipedia "world language" page, and the "lingua franca" page. And personally, on a completely different note, I always thought that the phrase "lingua franca" was kind of like the word "data". In English, it's the same for plural and singular. Of course, according to Merriam-Webster "lingua francas" and "linguae francae" are both correct... so that would make me wrong. :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| nebojats Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 89 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Italian | Message 4 of 38 19 October 2010 at 4:15pm | IP Logged |
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Hey, thanks for the feedback.
Sorry for saying Chinese instead of Mandarin! I thought I was pretty good at remembering to use the proper term, but apparently not... @Ari: I agree with your general assessment of Chinese (just joking, I mean Mandarin!). It's a massive lingua franca and if you look at its geographical coverage its fairly on par with the other contenders. But like you say, it's spoken so little outside of China, which makes it very... un-international, despite being the most spoken language in the world. I'm also very interested in hearing about Mandarin's status in international organizations, if anyone has information on that. Also, Ari, I just thought of this... what is the dialect situation of Mandarin? How many are there? How mutually intelligible are they? @Gray: I've also mused about Portuguese as a world language. The problem for me is that is sort of has the same "problem" as Mandarin, in that there are very few countries where it is spoken. On top of that, as far as I know, it's not much of a lingua franca. Do you know anything about that? Esperanto is definitally international in its spread and orientation, but unfortunately so limited! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6126 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 5 of 38 19 October 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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Really, Mandarin seems to be growing in popularity here in Northern California. Someone just opened a Mandarin immersion school for children a few blocks from my house. There are TV channels with Mandarin shows. Cantonese speakers are still maybe slightly more common, but some have told me they feel guilty about not knowing Mandarin well, and they feel they should be studying. Even Japanese people have asked me, "Why are you studying Japanese and not Mandarin?" I get the sense that there is a widespread feeling that Mandarin is an important language to know these days -- at least among Asians.
According to Wikipedia, in the USA Chinese is 4th behind English, Spanish, ASL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hardheim Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5200 days ago 34 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, French | Message 6 of 38 19 October 2010 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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Add German to the list. Every time I see an article relating to the UN and languages, I usually also read about how German should also be considered (unofficially) as important as the official UN languages. It's initial exclusion to the list of 'official' UN languages mostly about politics and the history of the formation of the UN. German along with Russian is a lingua franca in all of eastern europe, and in central europe. It is also by far the strongest economic power in europe, and that isn't going away any time soon. I may be wrong on this next point, but I recall reading that German is also the second most published language in the world after English. Edited by Hardheim on 19 October 2010 at 9:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 38 19 October 2010 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
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I have always wondered why Portuguese is not that popular as a foreign language in the US.It is ranked as #7 for native speakers on wikipedia and Brazil has a lot of opportunity to become powerful economically.
I think that there is always a conflict between speaker #s, distribution, economics and prestige/historical tradition/culture. I think that Spanish and English blend all 4 of these facets nicely. German and Japanese are probably stronger economically and culturally than they are on sheer speaker #s and distribution. With French it is tradition/culture and distribution. Mandarin has sheer # of speakers and economy behind it but it is not well distributed and they deal with censorship. Edited by fireflies on 19 October 2010 at 10:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6305 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 8 of 38 19 October 2010 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with German. As for Portugese it's listed as number 6 by the largest number of countries (10) and number 7 by the largest number of native speakers (150-200 million) so I wouldn't dismiss it outright. See this and this.
Also note that Hindi/Urdu and Italian might also be called lingua franca in their respective parts of the world. And then there's also the "classic" linguae francae such as Latin and Sanskrit. Edited by H.Computatralis on 19 October 2010 at 10:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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