If you had to choose a new lingua franca, what language would you pick? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 days ago by irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Lojban for now
Certainly not Esperanto

Lojban like Esperanto has been created to be a neutral lingua franca.
I've heard that it's a logical language that tries to do away with ambiguity and that sounds interesting to me.
Esperanto feels like a language made for the EU rather than the world and so do all Esperanto look-a-likes.
Lojban sounds like a cross between Romansh and a lost native American language. Not good compared to my two favorite sounding languages, Japanese and French, but at least more neutral than Esperanto. Esperanto sounds Spanish and Interlingua sounds like an Italian that thought that Esperanto should sound Italian and I don't like how either of those two languages sound.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

Are we sure it's actually usable as a natural language?

[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I have no clue, but it'll be better than a language that thinks it's acceptable for words like "read"
to not just have two different meaning, but two different pronunciations,
while also having words like "sense", "scents" and "cents" be pronounced exactly the same.

And while writing this, I just learned that pronunciation should be spelled with "u" instead of "ou".
That makes no sense.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago

Yes, the spelling is terrible, even if the spoken language is not.

[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

The sounds English makes is pretty good,
but I don't know if it's the culture or the language itself,
but it has a giant tendency to want to use a
euphanisms and dysphemisms to emphasize superiority
over other languages and cultures
and also has a giant tendency to use weasel words,
to weasel in authoritarianisms.

this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025

68 points (98.6% liked)

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