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After English, what are the most widely spoken languages across Europe? German or maybe Russian? A
Wikipedia claims German has the upper hand over Russian by a small margin: 170M vs 160M, yet Russian is declining and I really hope German isn't going to replace it anyway...in an ideal world Spanish or Chinese will step in but for now I'm not holding my breathe:
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
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It depends.
The most spoken ones as mother tongue are German, Russian, French, English, Italian and Spanish, whereas the most spoken ones as foreign languages to be studied are English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Italian.
80 million second-language German speakers seems like a lot. Especially compared to French and Spanish. Not saying German might not have more than those two, but I wouldn't think it would have so many more.
Wikipedia claims German has the upper hand over Russian by a small margin: 170M vs 160M, yet Russian is declining and I really hope German isn't going to replace it anyway...in an ideal world Spanish or Chinese will step in but for now I'm not holding my breathe:
Tough luck with Spanish becoming the dominant language of Europe. Spain is nowhere nearly as influential as Germany and France. Why would you want Chinese (I’m assuming by that you mean Mandarin), to become the dominant language Europe?
^ It's not just about influence, no one considers France worldly-influential other than delusional french revolutionaries (like Macron). French is much harder and only spoken in Quebec or Mafia/Rebel states like Cot D'Ivoire - Germany is loosing importance too ever since...well the fall of the Berlin wall.
China is communist, atheist, monocultural, workaholic - it's almost utopian if it wasn't for the dog eating and censorship.
All of the other languages have their drawbacks (I mean, Chinese? Everyone needs to learn a new writing sytem!) so English will remain the lingua franca of Europe - even in the EU itself to a large degree - for the foreseeable future. Everyone is already used to it, after all.
All of the other languages have their drawbacks (I mean, Chinese? Everyone needs to learn a new writing sytem!) so English will remain the lingua franca of Europe - even in the EU itself to a large degree - for the foreseeable future. Everyone is already used to it, after all.
Since Brexit many people want to see English reduced in the future (if not eradicated from the EU) with the alternatives being: German, French, Latin, Esperanto - none of which especially not the last 2 can be a serious alternative for L2 in any non-natively speaking country.
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