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[IchliebeHunde1492]

I hope I've posted this in the appropriate category; Dave's ESL Cafe is really strict about postings and where they belong. This seems to be the best category to place this topic in, so I'll give it a go.

One issue I had in China (or actually, it would've happened anywhere in the world outside of Spain and Latin America!) is that I got tired of all the emphasis on English, English, English, English. Of course, the Chinese are aware that there are thousands of other languages in the world, but students mainly only care about learning English. In public schools, English is the only foreign language option (unlike in the U.S., where students can choose from a number of languages). If a Chinese wanted to learn an "exotic" language, in this case, Spanish, he would have to attend some sort of private school or go to evening/weekend classes. I may be wrong; I may have missed something while I was in China, but that was my observation.

In light of the frustration over so much emphasis on English, I ended up speaking a LITTLE Spanish in the Chinese classroom! Like, when handing out papers, I would sometimes say to one row, "Here you go," and then the next row, "Aquí tenéis," ignoring for a minute that vosotros se usa solamente en España. (But hey, the Spanish I speak IS from Spain, namely Madrid, because that's the español original.)

But back to the topic, I really do think it'd be better if Spanish were the lingua franca of the world. Please note I am not a native Spanish speaker; I didn't even learn Spanish until college. But here's why I think Spanish should be the "lingua franca" of the world instead of English:

a) It is very easy to learn in general. I picked up Spanish very quickly. The grammar is simple enough (except for the subjunctive mood ). But then again, I'm very good at languages in general, so I picked up Chinese very quickly while in China. So maybe "very easy to learn" is very subjective, especially when it comes to languages! But still, Spanish grammar is simple enough for most learners.

b) It is nearly 100% phonetic. You can look at any Spanish word and know how to pronounce it. You can hear any Spanish word without the text and still know how write it. English, however, is NOT a phonetic language. It is not written as it is spoken. We ESL teachers all know how much difficulty this causes for English learners. Wouldn't it be much easier if the world's lingua franca were actually a phonetic language?

c) By some counts, Spanish has MORE native speakers than English . However, this is very hard to prove, as many Hispanics, particularly in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, are bilingual - i.e. they grew up speaking both English and Spanish, so both are considered their "native language."

d) It's more fun teaching a non-native language! It just is. I guess because I have been through the same process as the learners. Even then, Spanish is so easy to pronounce (more on that later) that it's really not hard to achieve a "near-native" accent. I did have an Ecuadorian girl once ask me, "¿Es usted de España?"

e) Spanish is easy to pronounce, or at least learn to pronounce. Think about it - only FIVE vowel sounds exist in Spanish! How many vowel sounds exist in English? At least three times as many. Again, that creates difficulties for ESL learners, especially if their native language didn't have certain vowel sounds that English has. Same goes for consonants - I've heard that the "th" sound like in "thin" or "the" is impossible for ESL learners to produce unless they mastered that sound as a child. Okay, in Spain, they use the soft "th" sound, but not in Latin American Spanish. Shouldn't the world's lingua franca have as few vowel and consonant sounds as possible?

f) "Hot" (both literally and figuratively) vacation spots such as the Caribbean and Central/South America are in Spanish-speaking countries, needless to say. Those countries get visitors from all over the world, and they would all have a better time if they had had to learn Spanish as the lingua franca of the world.

If I could change one thing in the world with a magic wand, I would Spanish the lingua franca of the world instead of English, for all the reasons above. English does not make a good lingua franca because of its spelling and pronunciation difficulties. Heck, even NATIVE English speakers sometimes forget how to spell a complicated word! I remember when I was in school, we were like, "How do you spell _____?" "How many 's's are in ______?" So, if it's hard enough for native speakers to master, why the HECK did English even become the world's lingua franca in the first place? Why not a simple, phonetic language like Spanish?

[Sashadroogie]

Simple phonetic languages.

[nomad soul]

[Mushkilla]

[Sashadroogie]

Perhaps not a bad thing for English, given the abuse it takes by those who can't speak it properly. Or write it...

[Bud Powell]

One cannot legislate language. Sorry. A language becomes what it is by virtue of its use (and misuse).

[water rat]

All of the above answers are correct. Since you asked for a 'serious' answer in your title question, my serious answer is that politics (read: military power) and economics made English top dog. You are doubtless aware that Great Britain (the English-speaking part especially) had a great empire that the sun was said to never have set upon. Their bitter, albeit short-lived rival, Napoleon (who they ended up kicking the 'arse' of), called England a nation of shopkeepers, and he was right, but it was exactly that - their dominance of industry and commerce for the whole of the 19th century and a few decades before and after it that made the English language "important". So even an ambitious bloke like old Boney (Napoleon) couldn't change that and make his own language and culture "the one" as much as he would have loved to do so. And then there was us Yanks. Do you know the reason the dollar is the world currency is that at the end of WWII wholly half the world's wealth/currency was in the United States? Like you, I am an American, but I am not proud of this fact. It's sad really that Europe was so devastated by war, and the rest of the world was so dirt poor (partly because of The Great Depression, partly because it always had been). So you see? Why would Queen Victoria or Dwight David Eisenhower say, "Muy bien, everybody, let's all learn Español, the grammar, spelling and pronunciation are all easier, and someday some dude who calls himself IchliebeHunde1492 and one and a half billion Chinese will thank us for it."? Not bloody likely, now is it?

BTW, this dollar dominance is breaking up only now. Our friends, the Chinese, are the savvy operators who see that 1945 was a lifetime ago, and it is they that have the economic might now. Fortunately for the world, they're not nearly as warmongering and ferocious as either the Yanks or Brits, and prefer to usher in The Chinese Century (We've had the British and American ones) without cannon or tanks. -but, I stray from the topic...

[plumpy nut]

[scot47]

Why not Klingon ? Or Esperanto ?

[spiral78]

[water rat]

[Alien abductee]

Read The Story of English (Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil, William Cran) if you want the real low-down on why our language is numero uno and not Spanish or something else. If you're too lazy to read then the book is also in documentary form, eight parts from start to finish and you can find it on some torrent sites. They don't teach this stuff in school but they should.

[grahamb]

[scot47]

I'll wait for the movie.

[grahamb]

Good English died with Orwell.