Lingua franca isn’t about native speakers, and if anything it’s about second language speakers. Mandarin has the most global native speakers, but even if we remove it from the running because it has a logographic writing system, number 2 is Spanish. Yet the global lingua franca is English.
While I get your point, it’s hard to argue that English is the lingua Franca in Europe, since there are more native French speakers than English.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 days ago
mabeledo@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Lingua Franca is about how many people you could communicate with across boundaries, thus native speakers play a critical role here.
“English is the global lingua Franca” is frankly debatable, given the proficiency requirements in many fields. Proof of it is that translators are still ubiquitous in places of business when it comes to negotiations.
janus2@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_languages_by_number_of…
This list estimates native French and English speakers are approximately the same amount as of 2024
I knew Russian was gonna be the largest but I’m surprised German was higher than French and English, and didn’t know French and English were approximately neck and neck