Make Spanish or Portuguese a Worldwide Lingua Franca

Not really well. Italian is much closer.

I confirm that Spanish is the main 2nd foreign language you learn in France, with English being pretty much mandatory. You can choose a 1st language that's not English (I chose German for example) but then you must take English as your 2nd language


Speaking off... Would be funny if French was to be the lingua franca. Bound to be the most spoken language by 2050, thanks to the African demographics :D
I don´t know if French speakers understand Spanish or Italian speakers, but we sure don´t understand them!

At the risk of derailing the topic, this makes me wonder how easily French-speakers can understand Spanish, especially basic Spanish, off the bat now.
It´s not easy if you do it out of nothing but if one just knows some of basic regular differences in pronunciation(that more or less have rules behind them) I bet it gets easier. Of course false cognates are bound to confuse you.
 
At the risk of derailing the topic, this makes me wonder how easily French-speakers can understand Spanish, especially basic Spanish, off the bat now.

I can sometimes understand written Spanish, but really can't understand it when it's spoken, beyond some very basic phrases. The pronunciation is very different.
 
Thanks to the guys who replied. :)

I can sometimes understand written Spanish, but really can't understand it when it's spoken, beyond some very basic phrases. The pronunciation is very different.

This actually made me blink - once I learned how Old and Middle English were pronounced and had a lot more long vowels like the other Germanic languages still use, it suddenly made understanding many phrases in Dutch and West Frisian much easier, even catching some German and Scandinavian words.

This really strikes how with the Frankish influence French is the Romance parallel to English in being bastardized by foreign conquerors. :p
 
How did French become the Lingua Franca of the Western World in the first place? Why did the elites of Europe as far away as Russia learn it and in many cases even preferred to speak it over Russian?

Please correct me if I got this wrong:

Europeans began printing books in the 1453 and:

-In the 15th century I'd guess that the Italian City-States, particularly Venice, were the financial, intellectual, and cultural powerhouses of Europe.

-In most of the 16th century the Spanish would have been the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe, while Portugal was respectable as well.

-After 1588 Spain began to decline, but their decline was slow and they were still a force to be reckoned with. France and England were both very powerful at this point.

So why does Latin get supplanted in the 17th century by French? Why didn't Italian do so in the 15th century? Or Spanish in the 16th century? Why was French chosen instead of English?

If I have a distorted view of Iberian power from studying Latin American history please tell me.
 
How did French become the Lingua Franca of the Western World in the first place? Why did the elites of Europe as far away as Russia learn it and in many cases even preferred to speak it over Russian?

Please correct me if I got this wrong:

Europeans began printing books in the 1453 and:

-In the 15th century I'd guess that the Italian City-States, particularly Venice, were the financial, intellectual, and cultural powerhouses of Europe.

-In most of the 16th century the Spanish would have been the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe, while Portugal was respectable as well.

-After 1588 Spain began to decline, but their decline was slow and they were still a force to be reckoned with. France and England were both very powerful at this point.

So why does Latin get supplanted in the 17th century by French? Why didn't Italian do so in the 15th century? Or Spanish in the 16th century? Why was French chosen instead of English?

If I have a distorted view of Iberian power from studying Latin American history please tell me.

Some reasons, though not all them

- French population, the largest in Europe (except Russia), meaning also more authors in the 17th and 18th
- The prestige of the French court, served by a well-organized propaganda in arts
- The earlier systematization of the french language itself, with the Académie in 1635
 
How did French become the Lingua Franca of the Western World in the first place? Why did the elites of Europe as far away as Russia learn it and in many cases even preferred to speak it over Russian?
Only the elite in many european countries spoke french, and that was 1-5% of the total population. Last poster gave the reasons. The second in my opinion the most important.
BTW around 1900 the lingua franca for most sciences was german.
 
France was actually top nation, at least in Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries. The top nation gets the lingua franca. The UK and then the US were top nations in the 19th and 20th century. That is really all there is too it.

In the case of Spain, what we call the "Spanish Empire" was really a loose assembly of different nations and power centers, which for some decades included Portugal, of which Castille was the most important. The Kingdom of Spain was actually not formed until the 18th century, by which time it had dropped several places in the standings.
 
So why does Latin get supplanted in the 17th century by French?

French was a common aristocratic language from a pretty early time. It was of course spoken by the English ruling class after 1066, and was also commonly used by the aristocracy of the Low Countries from the late medieval period onward; it was probably the native language of the emperor Charles V, for example. As for why, well, France was a demographic heavyweight and generally a major actor in European affairs. The language of its royal court carried a lot of prestige.
 
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