this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Legit though, nobody alive today had anything to do with English becoming the trade language. It used to be French, but that went away and English filled in.
Any country where English is the primary language is going to have less people needing a second language for anything other than the general benefits it brings, which aren't truly necessary.
It isn't like everyone, everywhere speaks English on top of their first language, nor does everyone speak multiple languages. They do just fine with the dominant language of their country, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Also, Australians don't speak English. They speak Cunt :)
Sgoin on cunt?
"It isn't like everyone everywhere speaks english on top of their first language" while it can never be everyone, every person I have interacted with from europe, brazil, india, etc has said English was pushed in school. so they are fluent in native tongue and english. And then you have Indians who often speak 4-5 languages besides english. Westerners just don't need to learn anything besides english, since everyone accomodates for english. Especially Air traffic control.
It's not like americans speak english either.
More like the Bri’ish don’t (know how to) speak their own goddamn language.
Dare I ask where the "T" is?
Also, the Bri'ish decided the adopt French spelling conventions into their language because they wanted to be ~~snobby~~ fancy, like "colour" and "theatre" -- it's a mess.
We North Americans follow the lead of patriot and genius Noah Webster who just wanted words to have sane, consistent, intuitive spelling conventions.
Colour is couleur in French
"I could care less"
Ay, all'a y'all'ns kin jist git rait on outta hyuh. Dayum yankee carpetbaggera.
Even the English royalty would speak in French in official ceremonies
Yup. It's just the vagaries of time, war, and shifting alliances that put English into the main trade language. The term for that is lingua franca because of the French dominance in that regard.
The only reason English is probably going to stay in that place is inertia. Well, that and the friendliness of English borrowing words so freely. It's easier to just adopt words with complex meanings into English than it is to translate them. But why change the trade language when it would cost more to shift things for no practical benefit.
Honestly, I wouldn't have minded more and better language options in school. But it was the eighties and very early nineties, in a rural town, I was "lucky" to have two choices in high school. But I think if I'd had access younger, the way some countries do English, I would have gotten much better at Spanish than I did. Even my ASL is better than my Spanish, and I have arthritis that makes signing hard.
Interestingly, while French was the lingua franca of Europe for several hundred years, it wasn't the origin of the term 'Lingua Franca'.
That term meant the "language of the Franks" and was the Mediterranean trade language in the medieval through Renaissance eras. It was actually a pidgin of Italian, French, Greek and Arabic adopted as being roughly mutually intelligible among Venetians, Byzantines and North Africans.
The reference to the 'Franks' is because the generic word for a western European (in the Byzantine, Greek world) had long been "Frank".
No kidding? That's what I get for just accepting information without checking it! I heard that from an old family member and have never bothered to question it
Thank you, for the correction and doing in such a friendly way :)
I always thought the same thing! I only found this out relatively recently, and I thought it was pretty cool