Is the Tower of Babel still affecting us or something?

Edit:

We have 8 billion people, yet the best we could muster for the most total speakers of a language is under 2 billion, including non-natives…

  1. English (1,452 million speakers) First language: 372.9 million Total speakers: 1.4+ billion According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.

https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-world#:~:text=1.,English (1%2C452 million speakers)&text=According to Ethnologue%2C English is,native and non-native speakers.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
    40·
    8 months ago

    You need a reason for a large group to choose to maintain a single language over over smaller groups creating their own.

    Look at Latin, it stayed mainly cohesive due to the Roman Empire and splintered off as the empire collapsed and the necessity for commoners to maintain communication across thousands of miles dwindled.

    English is the current lingua francia because the dominant nation has been speaking English for the past two hundred years and created a pop culture market that is both large and rich, creating a positive feedback loop making the market larger and richer.

    • moon@lemmy.ml
      31·
      8 months ago

      English is the current lingua francia because the dominant nation has been speaking English for the past two hundred years and created a pop culture market

      Cute that you think it’s the U.S. and it’s little movies that are responsible for English being widely spoken, and not the bloody history of British imperialism being forced on half the planet