this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
51 points (82.3% liked)

Europe

3856 readers
3217 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in !yurop@lemm.ee. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)

(This list may get expanded when necessary.)

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @federalreverse@feddit.org, @poVoq@slrpnk.net, or @anzo@programming.dev.

founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
 

There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] seeigel@feddit.org 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

It depends on what Europe wants to be. The language is in some ways connected to the culture. Would Europe get a more Mediterranean savoir vivre if everybody spoke Spanish or French? I think so.

An ambitious and interesting option for Europe could be Arabic as the lingua franca. If Europe commits, other countries like Iran or India could also be interested in joining. That could create a huge area with a single language as long as it doesn't splinter into dialects like the current Arabic.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

An ambitious and interesting option for Europe could be Arabic as the lingua franca.

There's Maltese, which is an official EU language, albeit probably not the most useful for interchange with the Arab world as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language

Maltese (Maltese: Malti, also L-Ilsien Malti or Lingwa Maltija) is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata. The only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union and the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet, and the only Afroasiatic language other than Somali to use a Latin script, it is spoken by the Maltese people and is the national language of Malta.

The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic, which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between mainstream varieties of Arabic.

Maltese has always been written in the Latin script, the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages. It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.

[–] Syntha@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Nobody in Europe wants Iran or India to join.

Also, most Iranians apeak Persian, not Arabic.

[–] seeigel@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The point of speaking Arabic would be to have the same language as North Africa and Arabia. And once Europe speaks Arabic, neighboring countries like Turkye, Iran or Pakistan and India could see the benefit in joining.

This doesn't mean that those countries become part of the EU. It would just create a huge zone with a single language which has its own advantages.

[–] Syntha@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What exactly is the point? Most people in Europe speak at least a little English, a ton of people in India speak English, Arabic is completely alien to Europe. There is no advantage to Arabic over English.

[–] seeigel@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The point is having a common language and thus economic and cultural advantages. English is a secondary language for most people. In the US, it's probably replaced with Spanish.

With Arabic, you have many more primary language speakers. Thanks to immigration, the transition to Arabic can be made easy. Then it's possible to sell products in one packaging from Portugal to India.

I am not arguing that this should happen. It's just an opportunity that is not obvious because Arabic is not a traditional European language. Though I would assume that there are now more Arabic than Basque speakers.

[–] Syntha@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Again, English would make so much more sense as a common language than Arabic. There are more English speakers in Egypt alone than there are Arabic speakers in the whole EU.

[–] shaserlark@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but Arabic is much cooler than English.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Could you explain why? Is there something about the language that makes it cool?

[–] shaserlark@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

It sounds badass. The script looks dope. It is much richer in vocabulary than English. I say let’s do it!

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Opinions really differ on that 🤣 And every language has rich vocab.

I was kinda expecting something along the lines of linguistics e.g Arabic has no gender, the script is alphasyllabic, it's Subject Object Verb, sentences have strict structure, or something like that. Just a personal opinion isn't really convincing, unfortunately.

[–] shaserlark@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Nah I mean I have some friends and they told me a camel has like 50 different names depending on how old it is and what it’s doing right now, e.g. a female camel who gave birth three months ago or a sitting camel or a camel that drinks an unusual amount of water (I’m making up stuff rn) would have their own names. Or here’s a list of date cultivars, there are like tens of names for the different types of dates it wild: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_date_cultivars

Otherwise I was honestly just kidding. It’s an interesting question but realistically it’s gonna be English and imo kids should learn English from kindergarten on and people would be bilingual like in India, or Kurds, Amazigh, Sudanese people who are native speakers in Arabic and their own local language. We could have all administration EU wide be bilingual too and that would honestly make it so much easier for everyone to move around and also for migrants that we desperately need to come here.

But with fascism being cool again I‘m afraid we’re moving far away from what I have in mind.