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Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by pjmlp on Thursday December 05, 2019 @03:22AM (#21710768)
It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant.

As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages.

English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.

Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by wannabag on Thursday December 05, 2019 @03:44AM (#21710847)
I have a similar background and the wealth of the content that's not in English is incredible and often missed.

From an outsider perspective, the time it took for British media and the political class to take note of the European sentiment on the issue of brexit was around 1 year. It was as if they just found out there was an non-English web out there..

Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by raverbashing on Thursday December 05, 2019 @03:57AM (#21710885)
Yes, if countrie's abilities to speak English are lower than what would be ideal, proficiency of any other language in English speaking countries is abysmal.

Maybe the US has a higher number, but a lot of those are due to family, not to education.

Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by flurdy on Thursday December 05, 2019 @05:12PM (#21717200)
English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time.

We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, but also in politics, business, social media there are "New Speak" version of English in those contexts.

One of these will evolve to be the lingua franca of the young connected people and dominate. And then be superseded by the next evolved language.

Once we colonize Mars and elsewhere there will be some interesting forks in languages I am sure.

Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by asveikau on Thursday December 05, 2019 @09:56PM (#21718898)
Important to note that this has probably happened before with other popular languages. The way you describe the hypothetical future of English sounds a lot like you could be talking about Latin. The phrase lingua franca itself came about to describe a very similar story.
Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by learner124 on Thursday December 05, 2019 @07:01PM (#21718039)
I think spanish and English could end up merging in some ways honestly. There's already so many words of similar origin, geographical proximity in the Americas and already the phenomenon of Spanglish has existed a long time. I think it would take at least a few hundred years though.
Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by ruiseal on Thursday December 05, 2019 @07:00PM (#21718028)
Lang Belta is a fun one.
Re:France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decl... by johnzim on Thursday December 05, 2019 @06:59PM (#21718026)
I agree. Globish is already iterating on itself so fast I don't think it'll be beat.