DBWI: French not the Lingua Franca

UGHHHH!!! So I am taking I started college this semester and one of my classes is French. I tried to learn it in high school, to say the least I failed. My teachers kept on telling me, "Blaahh.. Blah... you need to know French to do anything outside of the United States or Britian... Blah... Blah... you need to know French to be in academia..." So apparently French is the "Lingua Franca" and has been since the 16th century. How could history have been different so I wouldn't need to know French, but a different language. French just has too many irregularities... how dare they say English took a lot of words from French. On a different note... how do you tolerate learning French...?
 
Maybe you could get English to become lingua franca if they had one the seven years war? You'd have Britain in control of a lot more of North America and India than otl, which opens up more possibilities for English to come out on top.

OOC: I know very littler about the seven years war, I apologize if what I say regarding India is wrong.
 
Maybe you could get English to become lingua franca if they had one the seven years war? You'd have Britain in control of a lot more of North America and India than otl, which opens up more possibilities for English to come out on top.

OOC: I know very littler about the seven years war, I apologize if what I say regarding India is wrong.

That would certainly make English a lot more influential but I don't think it's enough to make it a Lingua Franca. The central and South American countries would still speak Spanish and France would still have a major foothold in India which would still pave the way for French dominance in China and Japan.
 

dead_wolf

Banned
The issue isn't the Americas or India or China or etc. It's Europe. French has been the language of the continent for centuries, and European domination in the Industrial and Colonial ages meant French got exported across the globe. You need to prevent the rise of French as the common language of Europe, and that means you need to harshly screw France itself so its language doesn't spread so widely.
 
Mais la Francais n'est pas tres difficile!
Its the Royal Society for the Protection of English, and its US equivalent that make me laugh. Flying Machine instead of Avion, Cold Storage Unit instead of refrigerateur, Horseless Carriage instead of voiture!!( OK car is the slang term for the last one but apparently its still not proper English).
Its time we got over it and learned French; everyone else does.
 
How can you have the Lingua franca be a different language from French? It certainly wouldn't be called Lingua Franca if that was the case!

(Alas, all I can do is ask awkwardly 'Parlez-vous chinois?')
 
UGHHHH!!! So I am taking I started college this semester and one of my classes is French. I tried to learn it in high school, to say the least I failed. My teachers kept on telling me, "Blaahh.. Blah... you need to know French to do anything outside of the United States or Britian... Blah... Blah... you need to know French to be in academia..." So apparently French is the "Lingua Franca" and has been since the 16th century. How could history have been different so I wouldn't need to know French, but a different language. French just has too many irregularities... how dare they say English took a lot of words from French. On a different note... how do you tolerate learning French...?

Butterflying the French and Indian Wars might help, I suppose; after all, it was that victory which helped the French solidify their control over the Illinois Country over the next quarter century afterwards(yes, even after the overthrow of the monarchy and with the rise of the Republic). And with that, it might also lead to a different United States as well. If the Patriots could seize all the British territory north of the Ohio River(whereas in OTL we just have Tippecanoe), then you might be able to create more free states after Independence; it is precisely due to slave states outnumbering free ones that caused slavery to last until almost the end of the 19th century(which only began to really end with the Great Panic of 1885 and the arrival of the boll weevil in 1890, even though overall profitability had been declining since 1875 or so); there, you might be able to end slavery by 1875, maybe even sooner.

How do I tolerate French, by the way? I'm from Tennessee so there's not many French speakers around(except Haitian blacks, mostly in Jefferson and thereabouts), but my mother has a large amount of Francophone ancestry from both (the state of) Louisiana and (the Laurentian province of) Quebec so I did have some extra motivation to learn it.

Mais la Francais n'est pas tres difficile!
Its the Royal Society for the Protection of English, and its US equivalent that make me laugh. Flying Machine instead of Avion, Cold Storage Unit instead of refrigerateur, Horseless Carriage instead of voiture!!( OK car is the slang term for the last one but apparently its still not proper English).
Its time we got over it and learned French; everyone else does.

We call automobiles cars just fine here in the U.S.(though voiture is also an acceptable alternative in northern New England, Louisiana, and the "Indian Belt" in Kentucky and Missouri); in fact, hardly anyone uses "Horseless Carriage" anymore anywhere in the Anglophone world, even the very elderly....even in Scotland.

How can you have the Lingua franca be a different language from French? It certainly wouldn't be called Lingua Franca if that was the case!

(Alas, all I can do is ask awkwardly 'Parlez-vous chinois?')



That would certainly make English a lot more influential but I don't think it's enough to make it a Lingua Franca. The central and South American countries would still speak Spanish and France would still have a major foothold in India which would still pave the way for French dominance in China and Japan.

That by itself might not be, true. But Britain did have potential to be a truly global empire even then and things could certainly have been better for them even after the American Revolution.

In fact, if anti-French sentiment still becomes a major thing in China(as it did in many areas IOTL, and in fact, it is still illegal to speak French in Beijing to this day), a more powerful Britain may just be able to really exploit that. And in terms of India, do remember that the Indians, too, have always been warmer towards the Brits than they ever were the French or even the Portuguese; in fact, did you know that England proper is almost 15% Indian today, and that curry is considered to be Britain's other national dish? Whereas only 3.5% of French citizens are even of partial Indian ancestry, and Hindi was actually widely discouraged even in private, until the early 20th century in some spots.
 
Last edited:
I agree that winning the French and Indian Wars would help. If the United States had gotten the Ohio Territory after the Revolution, it might've given us more land and encouraged immigration. Say what you want, but after a few generations, descendents of immigrants here tend to assimilate completely, and that includes learning English.
 
I agree that winning the French and Indian Wars would help. If the United States had gotten the Ohio Territory after the Revolution, it might've given us more land and encouraged immigration. Say what you want, but after a few generations, descendents of immigrants here tend to assimilate completely, and that includes learning English.

OOC: As per my last post, I wanted to point out that Tippecanoe is basically OTL's Ohio State, so they did get a little bit, at least, even if the rest did go to French Quebec, and later, Laurentia.

IC: Very true, although a little bit of language speaking outside of French still happens; for example, Italian in New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans, Yiddish in Boston, German in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, Cherokee in Sequoyah, Spanish in Florida, and even a little Gaelic in the Appalachians and Franco-English creole in Kentucky, Missouri and the Black Strip of Tippecanoe, etc..

OOC: BTW, my idea for the "Black Strip" was an area with a large number of African-American residents stretching from OTL Cincinnati to right around *Sandusky and areas in-between, owing to a proximity with a more ethnically tolerant Laurentia. Sequoyah is basically our world's Oklahoma and Arkansas is smaller than OTL, stretching no farther than 35 degrees, 35 minutes north. Does anyone have a good name for *Kansas, btw, or could we just keep the OTL name for that region?
 

Delvestius

Banned
English IS the new lingua Franca and has been since the E.U. chose for it to be. Practically speaking, it has been since the British Empire.
 
How can you have the Lingua franca be a different language from French? It certainly wouldn't be called Lingua Franca if that was the case!

(Alas, all I can do is ask awkwardly 'Parlez-vous chinois?')

Lingua Franca was actually its own language. It was a creole that was widely used throughout the Mediterranean, and used to describe other languages that came to be widely used for trade and such.

OC:Sorry, completely missed the DBWI part of the title.:eek:
 
Last edited:
English IS the new lingua Franca and has been since the E.U. chose for it to be. Practically speaking, it has been since the British Empire.

IC: English is the Lingua Franca of Anglophone Africa and the EU approved English to be one of the Four Major Languages of Europe alongside French, German and Italian as Britain is one of the four largest Economies of the EU alongside France, Prussia and Italy.

OC: We are discussing a TL where French is the most dominant language in the World.
 
Perhaps an earlier industralization centered on Britain might help? I'm thinking France's economic growth on the Révolution Industrielle had much to do with its current state as lingua franca. Even without holding a large colonial empire, English might be a tongue of business around the world. IIRC, many early industries were created on Britain, but never took off as in the mainland.

I'm thinking that German could also be a lingua franca in science at least: many inventors and researchers were German after all. Hell, even Universa* could be widely adopted.

*OOC: A constructed language, similar to Interlingua, made for scientific exchange.
 
UGHHHH!!! So I am taking I started college this semester and one of my classes is French. I tried to learn it in high school, to say the least I failed. My teachers kept on telling me, "Blaahh.. Blah... you need to know French to do anything outside of the United States or Britian... Blah... Blah... you need to know French to be in academia..." So apparently French is the "Lingua Franca" and has been since the 16th century. How could history have been different so I wouldn't need to know French, but a different language.

Today English is the lingua franca.....but Chinese and German also had the potential to become a lingua franca.


First German:

Without a Thirty-years war - or even more probably with a quick victory of the Catholic Emperor, Germany at least would had the potential to become the dominant power in Europe.

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

Second Chinese:

Due to a sooner modernisation - let say somthing similar to the fate of Japan during the 19th century - China would have become the only "Super Power".

Japanese ocupation and the even more the communist era till 1980 (very little economic developement) was a very big setback for China.
 
Mais la Francais n'est pas tres difficile!
Its the Royal Society for the Protection of English, and its US equivalent that make me laugh. Flying Machine instead of Avion, Cold Storage Unit instead of refrigerateur, Horseless Carriage instead of voiture!!( OK car is the slang term for the last one but apparently its still not proper English).
Its time we got over it and learned French; everyone else does.

You mean le français . . . if you're going to learn French you have to remember the gender! (It really is absurd that English has no grammatical gender, isn't it? No wonder English is unpopular.)
 
You mean le français . . . if you're going to learn French you have to remember the gender! (It really is absurd that English has no grammatical gender, isn't it? No wonder English is unpopular.)

It may be unpopular in Europe but it's actually growing in Africa, particularly in the cities, where international trade has been developing for some time in many cases.
 
It may be unpopular in Europe but it's actually growing in Africa, particularly in the cities, where international trade has been developing for some time in many cases.

No just Europe but also Asia, the Americas (Excluding former British possesions) and the Middle East. The only places where English is growing is in the former African colonies of Britain and the United States.
 
Top