There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
Not your main point, but I watched an interview with some senior translator person at the EC, and they said that the EC very intentionally refrained from codifying a “Brussels English” over exactly this concern: that it would lead to official government documents being written in a form that the typical person in the EU would consider distant, have a “Brussels elites that spoke differently from me” impact. The concern was that this would have negative political effects.
Can’t recall the name of the guy, but IIRC he had a British accent. Was an older guy.
Did drive home to me that there is a lot of political consideration taking place over policy decisions that I probably wouldn’t normally have expected.
That’s really interesting. Language is one of the main ways we distinguish ourselves (often subconciously). Designing a special Brussels English would likely make the ‘Brussels Elite’ more of a distinguishable ‘they’ indeed.