1600 AD - which language will be lingua franca today

Which language had the highest probability becoming the most important one in 1600 AD

  • Englisch

    Votes: 6 4.5%
  • French

    Votes: 30 22.6%
  • German

    Votes: 13 9.8%
  • Spanish

    Votes: 74 55.6%
  • Chinese

    Votes: 10 7.5%
  • Japanese

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Russian

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Arabian

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    133
True. Chinese wasn't very expansive country so Chinese hasn't very big changes being lingua franca.



Well China was expansive to some extent in East Asia. But the most important reason for becoming an important language is in my opinion economic power. And IF China due to early political reforms would have developed in a similar way than lets say Japan, THAN China would be much more important than the USA is IOTL, both economically and politically and therefore also culturally. Early colonies are not necessary.

BTW IMO the importance of the colonial empires are overestimated for the importance of a "world language".

Sure, Britain had a unbelievable huge Empire IOTL. But nevertheless that is not the most important reason for the dominance of the English language nowadays.

For the sake of argument let us imagine that German (or French) were the official language of the USA today. Do you really think that English still had its status as unchallenged lingua franca today?

Usually the following is true: economic power+political power ==> cultural influence
 
i don't know why some people would say german, german as we know it does not even exist at this time.

spanish, don't think so, even to a AD1600 obsewrver it was clear that spain was crumbling especially since philip III was rather incompetent.
I would either say french or latin, especially how widely french was spoken at the courts. a downtime observer would hardly look at what the common people would speak, and would only look at middle & higher class would speak.

Well German had at least the potential to become the most important language in Europe. There was a state which was dominated by ethnic Germans, "the Holy Roman Empire "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

It wasnt impossible that a strong personality could centralize it to some extent, although it would have been difficult due to the religious partition between Catholics and Protestants.

The Thirty Years' War 1618-1648 was the biggest catastrophe in German history even worse than WWI+WWII. Almost 1/3 of the population died, cities completly devastated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War

French became important only after this war.
 
Spanish. Not only is the Spanish Empire the largest in the world, but they also have the Portuguese Empire in personal union, which opens up trade and commerce in Asia. Japan is still open, with significant conversions to Christianity, largely sponsored by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries.

China, on the other hand, has just emerged from a devastating war in Korea, and is currently ruled by the late Ming, who are just absolutely useless. Add in the growing threat of the Manchu and other rebels, as well as the lack of Ming expansionism, and they seem to be in poor shape. We know that Portuguese and Spanish are already showing up in China to do business and serve as advisors, not vice versa.

France would also be a possibility, but they are still recovering from the Wars of Religion, which makes them look weaker than they are.

England is still largely a non-factor. Germany is still a bunch of squabbling principalities, with no common direction, and no sign of expansionism. Russia is still in the Time of Troubles, a plaything of foreign powers.
 
I agree that French would be the lingua Franca of diplomacy. German did excist in 1600 and it was widely spoken and it would be a useful trade language.

And of course Latin was still the lingua Franca of science. Many European cities had Latin schools.
 
Well China was expansive to some extent in East Asia. But the most important reason for becoming an important language is in my opinion economic power. And IF China due to early political reforms would have developed in a similar way than lets say Japan, THAN China would be much more important than the USA is IOTL, both economically and politically and therefore also culturally. Early colonies are not necessary.

BTW IMO the importance of the colonial empires are overestimated for the importance of a "world language".

Sure, Britain had a unbelievable huge Empire IOTL. But nevertheless that is not the most important reason for the dominance of the English language nowadays.

Other than meaning that English speakers were dominant across a very wide swathe of the globe instead of only a small part of it. That's a huge advantage to spreading your language.

If China remained only a power - however significant - within East Asia, there would be no reason why any Chinese language would be dominant on a global scale compared to those empires whose presence is felt everywhere.

Would people who dealt with China learn it? Undoubtedly. But compare the number of people who "dealt with" the British Empire, including the successfully broken off US, OTL.
 
In the absence of the Thirty Years' War, Spanish. Close enough to Latin that it wouldn't require an enormous shift, and a more heavily dominant Hapsburg dynasty which maintains a larger degree of control on the Empire counterbalances the gains France made in the next centuries, and Portugal probably never rebels against the pan-peninsular union, solidifying Hapsburg dominance over both Eastern and Western trade. The OTL 17th century was one long Hapsburgscrew. And, given only knowledge as had in the year 1600, I would not predict something so pervasive and thoroughly destructive as the Thirty Years' War.
 
Chinese ?

I don't think there was any chance of Chinese becoming dominant: sure China itself was really populous, but the country didn't really take enough of an interest in the wider world for it to be worth everybody else's time learning Chinese. As for Polish, no, just no. Sure the PLC was a strong country, but it's hard to see it being culturally dominant enough for its language to become the lingua franca without a whole flock of ASBs helping it.

What version? Modern Chinese is very varied, I speak very little Cantonese but can't understand a word of mandarin even less of the northern and western dialects - it's all Welsh to me!
 
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I went with Spanish. By 1600, it would have been quite noticeable that Ming China was not going to expand in a colonial manner, so any variety of Chinese as lingua franca would be out. France's colonial empire that year is basically non-existent. England's colonies are small, and I don't think German was used outside Europe. Japan in 1600 was fresh from a major series of overseas ventures, so it could have been a regional contender. Russian and Arabic seem limited by geography.

The Spanish Empire extended across the world, so that's why I went with Spanish. I, as an observer in 1600, would have thought that China would be the largest economy in the world by 2014. But I wouldn't that thought any of the Chinese languages to be the global lingua franca.
 
Chinese and its variants, if the Ming dynasty continued and expanded Zheng He's expeditions.

Zheng He's expeditions ended on 15th century and on this point I don't see Ming dynasty re-starting explorations and expansions outside of Asia.
 
Zheng He's expeditions ended on 15th century and on this point I don't see Ming dynasty re-starting explorations and expansions outside of Asia.

The main reason those stopped was thanks to the barbarians coming out of Mongolia. The Ming rebuilt the wall (as well all know, the Ming wall is the iconic Great Wall of China we see on post cards) to keep them out/hold them off and that money had to come from somewhere. Even if China didn't have problems up north, I'm not sure Mandarin would ever be universal.
 
If you're going to specialize, then there would be a fair chance of Dutch being the language of commerce/finance.

I could those who are "well bred" being polyglot (french for diplomacy, dutch for commerce, etc....) but latin being used across the board in science would seem more natural if one were to pick only a single universal language.
 
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