Wouldn't Spanish be a BETTER choice?

Okay, I may have underestimated the usage of French in northern Africa in general today; from my perception of it, it is a literary language, and a language of the educated, so to speak, in general there, but at the same time is facing a lot of competition from Standard Modern Arabic there, and is also not the language of the general population there, which is the various dialects of Arabic, for the most part. And, yes, I probably should not have used the word "back", since most of the Pieds-Noirs, yes, were born in Algeria.

Easterner,

Hello. It's nice to get your perspective on things. I have the feeling too that the Spanish language is more connected to Hispanic culture than English is to traditional English or Anglo-American culture. However, I remember a statement that the late linguistics professor at Columbia, Mario Pei, made with regard to the artificial languages (Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, Interlingua etc.): " Any of them will work as an international language" he said, "it's just a question of agreeing upon one."

Whenever I've checked out the linguistics section of the University of Washington graduate library, there is quite an impressive amount of material written in Russian on almost every language in the world. Some of it printed only in the last few years. When I first began exploring the languages of the Soviet Union in 1975, I looked at Russian books on the subject because the amount of information in English, even German, at that time was so meager.

The problem has been that since Russia was not a free-society (and still has a ways to go), books written by Russian authors were seldom available in American bookstores. English translations of any contemporary Russian authors were also hard to come by to unless it was someone very popular like Alexander Sozhenitsyn or Natan (Anatoly) Scharansky.

IMO, Esperanto would make a good international language, but unless a bunch of Esperantists start conquering other countries, or get rich enough that everyone wants to do business with them, few people will bother to learn the language.

As an American, the idea of anyone else displacing us as the #1 superpower bothers me, but if I had to pick, I'd rather see Europe in that position than China, given China's record on human rights.

see see = take a look
I'm too used to speaking Chinglish. lol

Mexicans and Spanish language are not taking over Southwest USA. When you come to a country you shoudl speak the language of the established peoples, and it is government policy here in Arizona that classes be taught in English, despite Mexi opposition. Chinese isn't going to be the next big one, because they had to change their language to match English (Pinyin).

The next language is Arabic. Speak it.

>>>China is actually viewed positively by most countries

Definitely not. Since when Communist dictatorships are viewed positively in the free world? Or if they are (solely due to the economic gain) that is very sad indeed...

Vytenis : try http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbcpoll3.html or http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12685784-2,00.html.
I understand China's poor record about human rights make it hard for us to admit that, somehow, someday, democratisation will prevail in this country too. Still, China isn't just a bunch of autogerontocrats : there are more than one billion people over there. Sooner or later they will govern themselves.

Travis : if you only knew how many Frenches are spoken in France (or out of France) ! Many of these variants are unknown to cliché-like 'educated' people you mentioned.

Some have aired their Anglocentric belief that English would be more 'universal' while Spanish could just be Hispanic (not 'universal') at best. Spanish literature deals with things universal, not just toros, tequilla, coups d'état and tacos. Picasso was a Spaniard, wasn't he ? From a non-Anglophone point of view, the'universality' of English is really relative, however much widespread this language may be.

"Mexicans and Spanish language are not taking over Southwest USA!"

Not yet !But they did in Miami!(Cubans mainly)
When I lived there (just for a short time) I almost gave up speaking English...and spoke Spanish!

<<When you come to a country you shoudl speak the language of the established peoples>>

So you speak Navajo? :-)

Why do Americans want to force Hispanics to learn English? I don't, and never will, understand that. If they want to learn English, great, if they don't, that's cool too.

greg, by "educated" I didn't mean that I myself view everyone who doesn't speak French as not such (what is "educated" supposed to mean, anyways), or that one speaking French in areas such as northern Africa makes one such (what is that supposed to mean), but rather that others /view/ it as such, similar to how Received Pronunciation in, say, India, as opposed to Indian English forms, is in a similar position.

As for English, I myself have no belief that there's anything inherently more "universal" about English itself (I don't see any reason why any language should objectively be any more "universal", whatever that is supposed to mean, than any other), but rather was just saying that the perception of it as such is simply a matter of English having been spread over a wide area, and throughout a significant number of different cultures through British and American imperialism, to the point that it is no longer really "owned" by any single culture or small group of cultures.

As for Americans forcing Hispanics to learn English, I myself do not see any reason why one should do that, and am strongly opposed to laws to make English an "official language" here in the US, or in individual states within the US myself. My posts previously here about assimilation were not about whether such *should* happen, but rather that simply it seems like in the long run, no other pattern seems likely, simply from looking at historical patterns within the US, combined with the tendency for the descendants of Spanish-speaking immigrants born here in the US to use primarily English, at least outside of the home. It's not a matter of "should", but rather one "will", for better or for worse. On a historical and a local level, I myself do not like such assimilation myself, as I myself wish that bilingualism were able to be viable on a long term basis here, but such hasn't seemed to be so in practice, and there are no appearances of any reason why Spanish will be an exception in this regard.

I read that the United States had more non-English speakers at the turn of the twentieth century (during the era of great European immigration) than it does now.

Oh, there were fears that the US, or at least the Midwest, would be "Germanized", and that English would actually be displaced by German, whether locally or nationally, with the numbers of German-speaking immigrants settling in that area at the time. And while they did eventually assimilate from a language point of view, for the most part, it was in general slower than the rate of assimilation language-wise of most Spanish-speaking immigrants today, and most other European immigrants at the time as well.

Well, Spanish and indeed Portuguese cannot be written off. In the long run Latin America is expected to become developed, and both of thhese languages as well as English will be spoken byh large numbers of people in what will be developed countries and will be linguae francae in their own rights in certain parts of the globe. The outlook for French? More difficult to say. Zaire, aka Democratic Republic of Congo, does not have the economic prospects of Argentina and Brazil, and some French-speaking countries in Africa are moving over toward English!! I presume that of the European languages therefore, French and German will decline in significance (Germans being expected to speak English anyway), and that English will remain important and Spanish and Portuguese become significant players too. Russian? Now there's a thought. The Eastern Bloc countries are now interested in German and English, but Russian is closer to the other Slavonic tongues. Russia is still a lingua franca in the former soviet union, and I presume that unlike Japanese, a major language spoken in a developed country that is largely restricted to one country, Russia will always be a major lingua franca. So that's 4 European languages for you.

Outside Europe: Arabic will grow in importance. Arabic is apparently hard for English people to learn, which may impede its progress, but the regrettable spread of Islam will help this language grow. Indonesian will become much more important. Hindi? Many speakers, but rather impeded by the large numbers of English speakers and indeed the large number of languages on the subcontinent, so I am ruling out Hindi. Mandarin? Hard for Westerners to learn - but they are just going to have to. Unlikely to become the official language of many countries as English and Spanish are - unless China conquers other countries, but will definitely rise up the food chain. The key languages in 2200 in this order: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Indonesian, Russian.

Deborah, English is the language of business in India, but Hindi is the language of politics. Politicians talk in Hindi in order to access the non-English-speaking masses.