AHC: Make French the Lingua Franca of the world

All agreed about Asian countries turning to English due to American influence. But in Europe, from Holland to Bulgaria, people actually try to ensure they don't pick up an American accent when they learn English, and are ashamed when they do.

Proximity helps. It was not until a few decades ago that it became commonplace for Continental Europeans to study English in school, which might suggest U.S. influence there. But I'd imagine that most English teachers in Europe have spent time in the UK, and it's a lot easier/cheaper for European students to take a train across the Channel than to fly across the Atlantic.

The annoying thing is that Europeans never seem to want to pick up a Scottish, Irish or Welsh accent; they all want to sound like James Bond:p.
 

longsword14

Banned
All agreed about Asian countries turning to English due to American influence. But in Europe, from Holland to Bulgaria, people actually try to ensure they don't pick up an American accent when they learn English, and are ashamed when they do.
But the reason for spread of English into Europe is America, Britain never had enough influence in Europe but USA did in the post-war world.
@funnyhat
Exactly.
People within Europe never have a pronounced accent like Britain does either, and their accent tends to be far more Atlantic in nature than even neutrally British.
 
I think any place continuing to use English after 1941 does have something to do with the USA... so, technically you're incorrect. And in the case of Pakistan and India, yes the USA being the world super power in 1948 had more to do with their keeping English than did the history of British rule.

I disagree on this point regarding India and Pakistan. All the more than India after its independance was at the head of the non-aligned movement, meaning It refused to fall or remain under the influence of both western and soviet imperialisms.

English has retained its status of official language in India also because southern India refused to have Hindi, a northern language, forces on itself. And so english appeared as the common and neutral language that was more acceptable as a second lingua franca for the cultural and linguistic mosaic that India is.

Same thing for Africa. Huge parts of Africa were colonized by France and Portugal. And these areas have retained french and portuguese as a lingua Franca although France and Portugal were then far weaker than english-speaking USA and Britain.
 
But the reason for spread of English into Europe is America, Britain never had enough influence in Europe but USA did in the post-war world.
@funnyhat
Exactly.
People within Europe never have a pronounced accent like Britain does either, and their accent tends to be far more Atlantic in nature than even neutrally British.

That's just not accurate about Europe. People with Dutch, Bulgarian, Finnish and Portuguese accents have their own accents when they speak English, but as they get better they tend to eschew picking up an American accent because they prefer British English, for whatever reason. It's not about which country has influence over these peoples, or whether they dislike the Brits less than then dislike the Americans: it's about what kind of English they choose. Most of these countries actually have more trade with the UK than then do with America, and most have bigger migrant worker communities commuting back from the UK than from the US. Still, data is hard to come by, but for indicative evidence take a look on any European website with an English-language version to opt for. 99% of the time, what national flag do we click on to get the English-language version? And why?
 

longsword14

Banned
That's just not accurate about Europe. People with Dutch, Bulgarian, Finnish and Portuguese accents have their own accents when they speak English, but as they get better they tend to eschew picking up an American accent because they prefer British English, for whatever reason. It's not about which country has influence over these peoples, or whether they dislike the Brits less than then dislike the Americans: it's about what kind of English they choose. Most of these countries actually have more trade with the UK than then do with America, and most have bigger migrant worker communities commuting back from the UK than from the US. Still, data is hard to come by, but for indicative evidence take a look on any European website with an English-language version to opt for. 99% of the time, what national flag do we click on to get the English-language version? And why?
Incorrect. The spread of English post WWII has everything to do with America, even though the language is not called American (hence the flag).
For all your arguments about continentals being influenced by English, nobody uses British accents either, it is either neutral or has local tinges.
Britain did not cause the spread, as shown by the situation pre-WWII, and after the war its influence decreased even more.
My argument might not have hard statistics but neither does yours. The decisive point here is the stark contrast in the pre and post war world.
 
Same thing for Africa. Huge parts of Africa were colonized by France and Portugal. And these areas have retained french and portuguese as a lingua Franca although France and Portugal were then far weaker than english-speaking USA and Britain.

True - in the majority of cases the new countries have kept their colonizer's language. I note only that where countries did switch, it was generally to the language of the most dominant power.

French and Portuguese have been influential too, though. We can note the example of Equatorial Guinea, originally just Spanish-speaking, which has added those two as official languages. The Democratic Republic of the Congo went from being bilingual (French/Flemish) under Belgian rule to just francophone after independence. I believe there is an increased emphasis in the anglophone West African countries in teaching French in school, too.
 
True - in the majority of cases the new countries have kept their colonizer's language. I note only that where countries did switch, it was generally to the language of the most dominant power.

French and Portuguese have been influential too, though. The Democratic Republic of the Congo went from being bilingual (French/Flemish) under Belgian rule to just francophone after independence.

This isn't necessarily true. French and Flemish were both de jure official languages of the Congo, but the de facto official language was only French, because at the time French was seen as much more prestigious within Belgium. It got to the point that when Mobutu was in a Congolese mission school before independence, he used to make fun of his Flemish teachers for their poor French IIRC. The reason the Congo dropped Flemish as an official language was not due to international influence, it was because there were simply no Flemish speakers there in the first place.

Same thing for Africa. Huge parts of Africa were colonized by France and Portugal. And these areas have retained french and portuguese as a lingua Franca although France and Portugal were then far weaker than english-speaking USA and Britain.

We should note that most of "Francophone" Africa barely uses French, usually French is just something spoken by the elites and in capital regions while you have other lingua francas. For instance, the lingua francas of the Congo are Lingala, Kituba, Tchiluba, and Swahili, Mali uses Bambara, Senegal uses Wolof (and some Fulani), etc. I don't speak Portuguese so I can't give any more than a wikipedia analysis of Lusophone Africa, but I know that in comparison to French, English or English pidgins are used as actual lingua francas in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, by which I mean they are used in both rural and urban areas for interethnic communication. So maybe the reason that French tends to be more limited to the upper classes/capital regions while English penetrates wider segments of the population correlates with the international prestige of the respective languages, which would imply that it does have a lot to do with US influence.
 
The spread of English post WWII has everything to do with America, even though the language is not called American (hence the flag).

Incorrect. Even though the language spoken is English, the flag used is not the English flag. If your point was correct then the English flag would be used. But the flag used is the British flag. That's because the vast majority of Europeans who speak English choose to learn and speak British English, not American English or any other variation.

Besides, who says there was a sudden spread of English as a foreign language in Europe only post WWII? It was already established in Europe as a foreign language prior to WWII, and indeed prior to WWI. That had nothing to do with America. The language that most notably spread as a new foreign language in Europe post WWII was in fact Russian.

Meanwhile, the 28-nation European Union officially uses British English as one of its three working languages for translation and interpreting, not American English. National curriculums in the E.U. teach British English.

What American English influence there is comes from film and television.

Meanwhile, I like women who speak in Texas.
 
Last edited:
We should note that most of "Francophone" Africa barely uses French, usually French is just something spoken by the elites and in capital regions while you have other lingua francas. For instance, the lingua francas of the Congo are Lingala, Kituba, Tchiluba, and Swahili, Mali uses Bambara, Senegal uses Wolof (and some Fulani), etc. I don't speak Portuguese so I can't give any more than a wikipedia analysis of Lusophone Africa, but I know that in comparison to French, English or English pidgins are used as actual lingua francas in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, by which I mean they are used in both rural and urban areas for interethnic communication. So maybe the reason that French tends to be more limited to the upper classes/capital regions while English penetrates wider segments of the population correlates with the international prestige of the respective languages, which would imply that it does have a lot to do with US influence.

In Angola, Portuguese seems to be on track to replacing native languages. Simply put, the population displacements associated with the Angolan civil war ended up putting mixed populations in urban environments where Portuguese was the only common language, and the educational system and mass media continued using Portuguese. The result was a thorough lusophonization of the country's younger generations. French seems to have made similarly thorough progress in Gabon, though thankfully without civil war.

In talking about language policy in Africa, you really have to contrast the French colonies with the Belgian ones. French African colonies made use of French more exclusively, while the Belgians promoted the lingua francas of the Congo that you named alongside French.
 
Top