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Wouldn't Spanish be a BETTER choice?
Wouldn't Spanish be the best choice for the international LINGUA FRANCA?
- It's much easier and faster to learn than English.
- It's easier to pronounce
- The spelling makes much, much more sense that the current English spelling (the pronunciation is quite logical!)
- Excellent, logical, easy to learn grammar.
- already used in many parts of the world. Quickly growing language, especially in the most powerful country, the U.S. (the government and many large company web sites now offer Spanish as an option, http://www.whitehouse.gov/espanol/index.es.html)
- about 350 million native speakers!
- one of the major world languages, used by the UN system, the WTO...
That would be logical. Humans are not.
Wow! Spoken like a Vulcan.
The main advantage on English that I'd say that Spanish has is that it indeed does have a far better orthography than English, as a whole. As for the grammar being any more logical or easy to learn than English grammar, well, that can be debated one way or another, and I bet it's not more or less logical or easy as a whole, but just is easier in some ways, and less easy in others, as languages usually turn out as a whole when they're being compared with each other.
As for ease of pronunciation, besides for orthographic issues and differing phonemic systems, comparing English and Spanish is comparing apples and oranges, as English is a stress-timed language, whereas Spanish is a syllable-timed language. Syllable-timed languages give each syllable equal time, and hence preserve individual syllables as units, whereas in stress-timed languages, syllables themselves are not given time individually, but rather time is only given to stress groups, so hence syllables themselves are negotiable as a whole, as they can be stressed individually or reduced, or even merged with other syllables by removing their vowels altogether, at will. Of course, this gives stress-timed languages much more flexibility in pronunciation, but it also gives them more complexity in that a single word can be pronounced many different ways by even the same speaker.
As for phoneme inventories, English does have a larger phoneme inventory, as a whole, than Spanish, yes, but I doubt this would in itself be much of an issue, besides that English puts more value in tense/lax distinctions than Spanish does, which may give people who natively speak languages which do not put much value in such distinctions trouble, but you can say this kind of thing about any chosen phonological feature or lack thereof as a whole. And on one hand, while English does have a number of phonemes, that is, /D/ and /T/, amongst others, which may give many trouble, Spanish has its own sounds, such as a number of approximants , which many languages lack, which may give some trouble.
>>Wouldn't Spanish be the best choice for the international LINGUA FRANCA?
<<
It's those that are the top of the food-chain that "kinda" impose their language on others. Sort of what Latin was to the Roman empire. Currently that's the US of A whether one likes it or not.
>>The main advantage on English that I'd say that Spanish has is that it indeed does have a far better orthography than English, as a whole. As for the grammar being any more logical or easy to learn than English grammar, well, that can be debated one way or another, and I bet it's not more or less logical or easy as a whole, but just is easier in some ways, and less easy in others, as languages usually turn out as a whole when they're being compared with each other.
As for ease of pronunciation, besides for orthographic issues and differing phonemic systems, comparing English and Spanish is comparing apples and oranges, as English is a stress-timed language, whereas Spanish is a syllable-timed language. Syllable-timed languages give each syllable equal time, and hence preserve individual syllables as units, whereas in stress-timed languages, syllables themselves are not given time individually, but rather time is only given to stress groups, so hence syllables themselves are negotiable as a whole, as they can be stressed individually or reduced, or even merged with other syllables by removing their vowels altogether, at will. Of course, this gives stress-timed languages much more flexibility in pronunciation, but it also gives them more complexity in that a single word can be pronounced many different ways by even the same speaker.
As for phoneme inventories, English does have a larger phoneme inventory, as a whole, than Spanish, yes, but I doubt this would in itself be much of an issue, besides that English puts more value in tense/lax distinctions than Spanish does, which may give people who natively speak languages which do not put much value in such distinctions trouble, but you can say this kind of thing about any chosen phonological feature or lack thereof as a whole. And on one hand, while English does have a number of phonemes, that is, /D/ and /T/, amongst others, which may give many trouble, Spanish has its own sounds, such as a number of approximants , which many languages lack, which may give some trouble.<<
This has to be the one of the most enlightening post I've ever read. Thank you Travis that was an excellent analysis of the two languages in question.
"Wouldn't Spanish be the best choice for the international LINGUA FRANCA?"
No because we already have English and its dominance is currently well established.
"- It's much easier and faster to learn than English."
An entirely subjective statement.
"- It's easier to pronounce"
Another entirely subjective statement.
"- The spelling makes much, much more sense that the current English spelling"
True - but so what?
"- Excellent, logical, easy to learn grammar."
Spanish grammar is no more or less "logical" than English grammar.
"- already used in many parts of the world. Quickly growing language, especially in the most powerful country, the U.S. (the government and many large company web sites now offer Spanish as an option, http://www.whitehouse.gov/espanol/index.es.html)
- about 350 million native speakers!
- one of the major world languages, used by the UN system, the WTO..."
All very lovely sentiments, but the position of English has nothing to do with its intrinsic qualities as a language. The last two back-to-back global economic, political and military superpowers since the Battle of Waterloo have both been English-speaking; that's why English is so dominant in the world today.
This is how history "works." Latin was the "world language" of its day not because of its own linguistic merits but rather because it was the language of power, influence and economic advancement.
But for a victory or defeat here and there, or events taking another direction, Spanish or Dutch or French or Chinese (or any other language for that matter) could have just as easily become the dominant language of our day.
Actually, now that I think of it, if there's any real disadvantage to English, besides orthographic issues alone, it's that at least American English tends towards a rather severe "low"/"high" distinction with respect to register, and that most people who are non-native learners of it who aren't in a natively English-speaking area often are only really taught the "high" register, as it is supposedly the "correct" speech form, even though the general population tends to speak various "low" forms, in various dialects, even though most people will be able to codeswitch to "high" forms when necessary, even though this may be an inconvenience overall. Consequently, they may have problems communicating with native speakers at times in a spoken fashion outside of formal contexts, due to not having been formally taught "low" forms, which they then have to basically pick up on their own. However, though, this is less a disadvantage that is a matter of the English language itself, and is more a matter of how it is taught often differs significantly from how many actually speak it. In addition, English is certainly not the only language for which this kind of thing often applies, as well.
Spanish and *French would work just as well as English as "international" languages. However, since both languages are past their prime, it's unlikely they will ever be adopted by the world at large for international communication. On the other hand, Portuguese has a lot of potential since it is the language of Brazil, a large, populous and relatively young nation. It is still used as a lingua franca in Portugal's former African colonies. Portuguese could someday become the dominant language of the Southern Hemisphere and a close competitor of English. Nevertheless, I don't see the international use of English declining for a long time to come.
*Before World War II, French was the international language for diplomacy, English for business and German for the sciences. Since then, English has taken over in all three areas. Russian, however, is a close competitor with English in the sciences and social sciences.
Two problems with Spanish as a lingua franca:
1. I don't think Spanish is that easy. English is well-known for its spelling and numerous exceptions, but its verbs are far easier than Spanish verbs.
2. As people have already mentioned, the spread of a language has more to do with the military/economic strength of the languages speakers, than the qualities of the language.
Yes, the verb system of Spanish is as a whole one point where it definitely is not as simple as English, which as a whole has a relatively simple verb system, from an inflectional standpoint, even though the usage of tense and aspect combined are more complex than they may superficially seem to be in English, and the new additions to the modal system in informal American English have also added some added degrees of usage complexity (but also capacity to express shades of meaning, as well) to it, from a modal usage standpoint.
Carlos,
The problem is that people don't choose to learn a dominant language for the sake of it : they learn it because it's dominant. Were Tagalog dominant, you'd find Tagalog institutes almost everywehre.
However Spanish might become dominant if, for instance, one of these two conditions is met : Spanish-speaking countries outsmart the USA in terms of economy; Spanish turns out to be dominant within the USA.
In the very long run, it is not unthinkable a non-European language will succeed English. Perhaps an Esperanto-like version of Mandarin ?
Right, so the consensus is that English wasn't a choise, thus there isn't a choice in the matter.
I do agree with the above posters that English is dominant because of who is dominant (English tagging along for the ride :). The properties of the language has nothing to do with it.
>> On the other hand, Portuguese has a lot of potential since it is the language of Brazil, <<
Overrated. Mexico is in a stronger economic position than Brazil and getting better as times progresses.
Inflation
Brazil - 9.3% (37th place)
Mexico - 4.0% (65th place)
Mexico wins.
GDP per capita
Brazil - $7600 (74th)
Mexico - $9000 (66th)
Mexico wins.
Unemployment
Brazil - 12.2% (54th)
Mexico - 3.3% (108th)
Mexico wins.
And Mexico is just one of many Spanish-speaking nations that have a lot of room for improvement economically speaking. You have Argentina that may eventually get out of the hole it dug itself into and Chile is doing pretty well too with some saying that it has reached "first world" status. If anything Spanish will gain more international prominence whilst portuguese will only be particularly uselful for those that speak portuguese already.
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