Quote from: 3acaga on July 09, 2018, 08:40:12 PM

Quote from: merchantofzeny on July 04, 2018, 03:08:54 PM

I don't see it as "most powerful" (what's powerful is the American army and passport). I see it rather as most useful. It is widely-spoken and it is the language of academia and pretty much the internet.

It is simply the result of various historical events - any language could have been used. Had the Aztecs colonized the world, we'd all be speaking Nahault.

Quote from: opinion3 on July 03, 2018, 09:23:40 PM

English language is powerful of course, but the most powerful one I think is Chinese. It's a language of the future.

It took centuries for English to displace French so I don't think Chinese (or rather the official Mandarin) is going to be the lingua franca anytime soon.

Why argue which language is better?
There is a language of deaf-dumb people - and there it does not matter who you are or what country you are from, right?
At the moment, English is more communal throughout the world, but everything can change if our planet survives a couple of millennia ...

I don't think any language is "better" and I'm not arguing for that. There are certain nuances when comparing languages with each other (for example, try this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYlVJlmjLEc) but languages evolved to suit the needs of their speakers and it served them well for a long time anyway.

Again, whichever language is the "lingua franca" (funny since it literally meant "Frankish tongue") is usually due to circumstances rather than any inherent quality of that language: Latin in Western Europe because of the Catholic Church and the idea of keeping Roman traditions alive, Arabic in the Islamic world since it is insisted that the Koran be read in it, French spoken across courts in Europe because of the cultural influence of the French court, English later due to media, etc...