Say like they picked French or Spanish to use instead
Because American Media has a lot of influence so I wonder what if English wasn’t chosen. Would there be people that would see French/Spanish as a desirable language to learn?
British colonialism shaped the wide use of English throughout the world a lot more than anything to do with the US.
In the sense that the US is a product of British colonialism then yes. Global communication wasn’t anywhere near robust until the empire was in decline.
If the USA was going to pick another language, it would be German.
Gestapo is already in their daily vocabulary
If they knew their vocabulary they’d knew that
- ICE is a fucking train
- ICE is always late
- ICE has broken air conditioning
- ICE arrives in the wrong order, today
First of all, they did not pick any language at founding. They refused to settle on one. And I don’t think they ever changed that (although I wouldn’t put it past the current administration to do something like that because 47 has the best words as we all know). English is de facto the language of the US like Bern is de facto the capital of Switzerland but it isn’t set in stone.
German was briefly seriously discussed. That would have been funny.
I think the influence of the British Empire has done more to make English the lingua franca. But I think it is conceivable that we would be conducting a lot more diplomacy in French or Spanish if they had won out. But there are still huge chunks of Africa and Oceania that speak English. And Hockeyland. And big business hubs like Singapore or Hong Kong - the language of trade would still be English.
“de facto” literally means that it wasn’t decided.
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.
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.
Nothing much. Bad timing. USA is losing 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.
Mandarin
Problem is that it:
- lacks the amount of colonization as British empire had
- 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.
Science and business are the biggest contribution to language adoption
