[avar]

As a non-native English speaker I think this is a horrible idea. So rather than for us to all communicate in English which is spoken natively by around half a billion, you'd rather international communication take place in a language nobody speaks natively?

That seems like a horrible idea. When the lingua franca is some common natively spoken language at least people who can confidently correct you exist.

Having everyone speak a non-native language would just lead to a regression towards the mean, and such a language would be much harder to learn than any existing language because it wouldn't come with a culture. There would be very few books, movies etc. in that language.

[olakease]

English is the third most spoken language. There is more people speaking Spanish and almost double speaking Chinese. More or less 1 of every 7 people in the world speaks Chinese. Should we make Chinese the lingua franca? Why is english better? Also, there are more people speaking Spanish than English.

[avar]

One of the inherent fallacies in your initial comment that I didn't address, but which you've brought up here: Nobody makes anything the lingua franca, it's something that happens organically.

I'm sure you're as aware as I am why English is the current lingua franca. It's mostly a historical accident, and it's what we've got.

Whether the lingua franca might be English, Chinese or whatever is unrelated to your initial comment, which is what I was replying to.

There you were proposing that everyone should learn some artificial language for international communication. I think this is a bad idea for the reasons I stated above.

Now instead of defending your argument that we should all use some constructed language you're off on a digression about why English and not Chinese, both of which are natural languages.

[olakease]

I'm still defending my argument. And for that reason I'm saying that "English is already spoken by X people" is not argument. And that is the argument I always hear about this topic.

My argument is that to learn and master a natural language will take years —and even with a lot of effort— you will probably not master it. Which makes English an elitist skill. Should the international language be an elitist thing? No, it should not. If your mother tongue is a Germanic one then you will find English quite easy. Otherwise not.

Non natural languages like esperanto are easier to learn and master. In a couple of months you are used to them.

[avar]

I wasn't making any argument for why English should be the lingua franca. In any case all such arguments are academic, it's not like there's going to be some meeting where the lingua franca gets decided.

Let's say that there was such a meeting and "we" all decided that we're going to speak Klingon or whatever as a lingua franca. How do you think that would work? People wouldn't care what the decreed language is, maybe you'd have UN meetings in it, pass laws to teach it in school in lots of nations or something.

It would probably become even more of an elitist skill than just using a language that already has lots of native and non-native speakers already and lots of culture to go along with it, just like Latin was back when we effectively had this sort of arrangement, sans the constructed language.

Finally, if you really haven't heard a better reason for why English became the current dominant language than "it's already spoken by X people, but how come not Chinese and Spanish" you really owe it to yourself to read some of the things that come up when you Google the likes of "history of lingua franca" etc.

[olakease]

What makes English an elitist skill is precisely its natural language nature. I hope you had some time to visit europe. All of us get English as a second or third language at school.In european countries were films and tv programs are translated to their own language is not that easy to find common people that can speak English beyond the pretty basic. And this is a reality in countries like Italy, Spain, France or Germany.

In such countries, when you want to learn english —and you do not have a lot of money— your best deal is to travel to UK and get a crappy job so you can learn the language.

If instead of a natural language they got taught a non natural one, they will not need to that, because one of their advantages is that you get them really fast.

[avar]

    > I hope you had some time to visit europe.

I've lived there my entire life, and not in native English speaking countries. As I said at the start of this thread I'm not a native English speaker.

    > In european countries were films and tv
    > programs are translated to their own language.

This isn't the case in all European countries. I don't think Germany, Italy, Spain etc. are doing themselves any favors by doing this. Not dubbing your movies is the perfect opportunity to teach your population the lingua franca, they're missing out, and it shows in their English skills.

I didn't grow up with dubbed movies, and I think it helped by language skills immensely.

    > your best deal is to travel to UK and get a
    > crappy job so you can learn the language.

Plenty of people learn English a near-native level without living in a natively English speaking country. I did, just watch some TV (not dubbed) and read lots of books (not translated).

    > If instead of a natural language they got
    > taught a non natural one.

I guess, maybe, but really this is never going to happen, we might as well fantasize over how easy it would be if we did away with this whole communication via sound waves fad, and just all learned the same sign language instead.

We live in an increasingly globalized world, English is the de-facto world language by sheer inertia. States that don't have it as a native language that aren't teaching their children it at a native level are at a distinct disadvantage.

[shawabawa3]

English is the third most spoken first language. It's the most spoken second language by far

[olakease]

Yes. It doubles Chinese or Spanish. But again, we are in 2016. As a civilization we have a global communication system. But we can not understand each other.

We are 7 billion people. 200 million speak english as a secondary language and 300/400 million as main language. With this numbers, don't you think that it will be better to find a language that is fine for everybody? Or when someone wants get into the international arena he/she must to learn English which will take years?

[shawabawa3]

> 200 million speak english as a secondary language

Where did you get that number? The sources I've seen are 1+ billion

I'm not saying everyone should speak english. But it seems if things carry on the way they are, everyone will speak english, even if it isn't the best "choice"

[olakease]

From Wikipedia. Turns out that Spanish wikipedia and English wikipedia shows quite different numbers. So now I'm confused. In this website http://www.ethnologue.com/language/eng they say that total english users are 942,533,930.