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?

  • HansEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    That may not be entirely true. Some studies have shown that Danish children generally take longer to learn to talk than children from other Scandinavian countries, which are incredibly similar in most other aspects. The leading hypothesis is the complicated phonology is to blame.

    Popular science article in Danish, summing up the several studies

    • Don Antonio Magino@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      The researchers themselves however also make the valid point that

      Complexity in language, however, is a difficult size [standard, I presume]. For although Danish is difficult in pronunciation, it is grammatical, for example, much simpler than German and Finnish, which in turn is easier to understand than Danish.

      But I was speaking in general terms, anyway. Language, being a natural phenomenon, of course has lots of variation.