this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Statistically there are far more people who speak Chinese and Spanish in the world than English as a native language. I’d probably go with Spanish personally as a worldwide language if we were going to go purely for equality of communication purposes, but statistically those countries are poorer, mostly because imperial nations like the US have totally ruined their governments and stolen their resources in the name of capital.
These imperialist ventures are also why many poorer countries end up teaching English, or learning English of their own volition; to either get jobs where they can communicate with these imperialist interests within their countries, or to escape the effects of imperialism in their country by going to the only place that’s safe from US imperialism, which is inside the US itself.
Chinese is a poor example because, while true in absolute terms, the overwhelming majority of speakers live in one country, no other major country has any internationally significant mass of speakers, and almost no foreigners learn it; compared to English or Spanish, which are pluricentric languages with multiple major economies speaking them natively, plus widely spoken as second languages. No other languages can seriously contend with these two on that basis.
English is de facto the language of choice principally because it’s a near universal second language for many. And actually, when second-language speakers are included, it is the most widely spoken language in the world, and so although it is not #1 in terms of native speakers, it is the most widely known language.
You asked why I said it was imperialist bullshit. I told you why.
You are replying to multiple different people in this thread 🙂
Oh. I’m a new lemmy user. I am also very stupid. Be patient with me.