What if the USA decided to use another language as its *de facto* national language at it's founding? How would it affect the world?

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• Unquote0270@programming.dev ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  British colonialism shaped the wide use of English throughout the world a lot more than anything to do with the US.

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• mrdown@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Mandarin

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  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Problem is that it:

    1. lacks the amount of colonization as British empire had
    2. Mandarin-media is so boring. They’d never get widespread like Hollywood stuff. I used to watch them as a kid, but then I just realized they’re repeating the same cliches too often… It’s basically just half anti-japan stuff and half set in imperial China, never anything exciting.

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    • mrdown@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Science and business are the biggest contribution to language adoption

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• AE5NE@lemmy.radio ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “de facto” literally means that it wasn’t decided.

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• rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Sure, French was itself something of a lingua franca in centuries past, and Spanish is already a great candidate because it has, right now, more native speakers than English. I learned Spanish in school as a third language just because (we had to choose between Spanish, French and Latin) - didn’t stick, though, listening comprehension for Spanish is very hard and there wasn’t enough incentive for me.

  English’s hegemony as a lingua franca is to a very large degree because of the US, especially after the UK lost almost all of their colonies after WW2. That said, English would probably still be a minor lingua franca in northern Europe, because it’s a lot easier to learn than a romance language if your native language is germanic.

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• sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If only the government “decided”. no one will care and Americans will continue using English as usual.

  If all Americans decided to speak Spanish. World would still continue to speak in English because currently all information in all fields are mostly in English.

  If all Americans decided to speak Spanish and translated everything into Spanish then probably world will start speaking Spanish.

  A real life example is when Romans conquered all Greek territories, all those nations continued for decades writing in Greek.

  I know for a fact that in Egypt all taxes and government related stuff remained in Greek even decades after Arab conquest.

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• Atlusb@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think the USA had enough German influence that it could have been a major second language if things where different politically at that critical time.

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• Lembot_0006@programming.dev ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Nothing much. Bad timing. USA is loosing its position as an engineering/scientific center. Hollywood is unimportant in the sense of language spread. English is the current lingua franca, not American language.

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