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Lingua Franca | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4432 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 9 of 18 15 January 2014 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You can't argue against the global spread of English but sometimes I think people overestimate how widely
spoken it is. Even in Europe, there are still plenty of places you can go where you will run into a lot of people who don't speak English to a functional level. Yes, it's the international language of science, aviation, commerce, politics and tourism and highly-educated people invariably speak good English, especially the younger generations. But there is still a long way to go before it penetrates deeply into the general population of non-English speaking countries (Scandanavia excepted). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3807 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 10 of 18 15 January 2014 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Do most people REALLY think that everybody speaks it? I don't, but n=1.
Even if that figure of 21% doesn't seem that high, it IS really high. The thing is that for educated people especially, some languages provide much more of a boost than others. French doesn't have that many native speakers compared to the other official UN languages (about 70-90 million based on most estimates, although the Francophonie estimates like 120 million or so second-language speakers) but it is dominant in the countries where it is an official language. For example, the elite in Haiti and the Francophone African countries speak French even though the masses (aside from isolated exceptions like the Ivory Coast) do not. English doesn't get you very far in Spain, for example, but if I have to pick a foreign language as a lingua franca to make myself understood in Europe, I'm picking English! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4168 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 18 15 January 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My money is on football. Or indeed money. Or the language of love.
Sorry, Μήτσο, I couldn't resist. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4478 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 12 of 18 15 January 2014 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4100 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 18 15 January 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My grandmother grew up in one of the outposts of the British Empire at its height, and
she said that the lingua franca was French. She even learnt years of it during secondary school, despite France having probably half the size of Britain's global empire.
Portugal could challenge that: Meu Amor Marinheiro Senhora da Nazaré Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 January 2014 at 11:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4517 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 18 15 January 2014 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The language of love is Hebrew...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 18 16 January 2014 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Get with the times! It's Hungarian! ;-) (and it's not just because Hungary has a porn stereotype!)
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| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5871 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 16 of 18 16 January 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The soul is the same. It's just the temperature that's different. Sometimes, not even that. Edited by Luso on 16 January 2014 at 12:36am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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