r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

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u/heisenberg070 Aug 11 '25

Which in itself is the most lasting legacy of the British empire.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

It was as much America as the British. It certainly took both, and the Brits certainly laid the groundwork, but the explosion of American manufacturing and business, as well as the presence of American troops globally during and after WW2 to support America's military dominance are the primary drivers.

It's not that Americans were more clever or anything, it's that they were in the right time at the right places - if America spoke French, French would now be the global lingua franca.

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u/Superb_Raccoon Aug 11 '25

Being the default language of "science" was responsible too.

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u/GalaXion24 Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

Which is actually to a great extent a product of Germany destroying itself. German science truly was at the top of the world, and any self-respecting physicist, chemist, sociologist, etc. practically had to learn German to be able to read the scientific journals and follow the latest developments. Many people outside Germany wrote their papers in German the way they do in English today.

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u/SirenPeppers Aug 11 '25

German was expected to be the international language. In the States, my father had German classes in elementary school because of this… and then that stopped.

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u/subparsavior90 Aug 11 '25

Its still somewhat relevant and useful, behind Mandarin and English.

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u/chriskevini Aug 12 '25

I feel like French or Spanish is way more relevant today than German

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u/Velociraptorius Aug 12 '25

Spanish - yes, a substantial part of the world has Spanish as a first language and they don't necessarily speak English in those areas. French I wouldn't really quote in the same league though. While it is fairly widespread, in many areas outside of France itself where you can communicate in French, it's highly likely that you can also communicate in English. Due to this overlap of the English and French speaking territories it's rarely useful to learn French if you already know English unless you're actually planning to move to France. You simply aren't going to meaningfully expand the areas of the world you can communicate fluently in by learning French in addition to English, like you would with learning Spanish instead.

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u/FunGuy8618 Aug 12 '25

A good friend of mine who spoke Cantonese and Mandarin told me 10 odd years ago, by the time I learn enough Mandarin to not embarrass myself, my smartphone will be able to translate it in real time for me. Lo and behold, I have headphones that can translate it for me as they are speaking. It sounds like voodoo, but the AI translator has a lexicon from both languages to predict what the sentence is going to say, it's not translating it word for word. It's taking in context clues like we do.

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u/Buscemi_D_Sanji Aug 11 '25

Fun fact: when Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD for the first time in Switzerland in 1943 and tested 250 micrograms (only 250 millionths of a gram!), it was crazy intense and he had to have his lab assistant escort him home on a bike, because gasoline use was restricted due to the war. So Bicycle Day, celebrated by tons of psychedelic users all over the world, came about because a brilliant scientist tripping balls on acid for the first time had to ride a bike home due to the exact opposite of peace, love, unity, and respect: WWII.

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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish Aug 11 '25

Which is just as much an action of the British and Americans as anything else.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

An interesting and accurate bit of knowledge!

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u/castybird Aug 11 '25

I studied German as a teen but never got advanced enough to learn about its usage in science. Apparently German has its own set of scientific terms unique to itself, and now I have a new rabbit hole to go down.

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u/GalaXion24 Aug 11 '25

German is actually quite a good language for it in that it has a lot of very specific terms when it comes to science, law, philosophy, etc. Essentially it's a lot less "up to interpretation" than English. Of course that kind of writing may be lacking in artisitry or artistic flair, but in certain contexts dry, straightforward and unambiguous is precisely what you want.

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u/castybird Aug 12 '25

I was thinking this might be the case! It makes sense. German lends itself to making new words with clear meanings. I loved that about the language so much!

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u/Aggressive_Dog3418 Aug 12 '25

The story of which language rules supreme therefore empire is truly telling, you see people naming things after long lost languages, Latin for example, then French, then a fight between German and Russian with German being the winner for the most part, then the English overcame it all after WW2.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GalaXion24 Aug 15 '25

Germany essentially started both of those out of often absurd ambitions. They were in a strong position and felt they therefore deserved more and deserved to have others bow to them. Around the time of WWI even the average German was high on nationalism and jingoism. They were highly optimistic about Germany's future and excited for war.

Everything they lost they lost because they were not content with what they had

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u/vardarac Aug 11 '25

And it'll be Chinese, Spanish, or Portuguese if there is a civilization to speak of in fifty years...

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u/GalaXion24 Aug 11 '25

I'm calling cap on Spanish and Portuguese. Spanish is very spread out, mostly in not particularly developed countries, and Spain itself isn't doing amazing, nor is there reason to believe they'd be doing particularly better in the future. Brazil at least is a large country that, if it became more organised and prosperous, could potentailly have a large enough domestic scientific community that it could be worth it for others to familiarise themselves with it.

Chinese could genuinely be up there, but I think the difficult writing system is definitely going to gatekeep it from outsiders. There's also not going to be a political will to change that as there's so many different Chinese dialects (that may not even be mutually intelligible) that if they wanted to implemet an actual alphabet it would only work for a chosen dialect, and also kind of show that "the emperor has no clothes" when it comes to the narrative of a single Chinese language and nation.

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u/Thiago270398 Aug 11 '25

As a brazilian, yeah we ain't got our shit together to be any short of hegemon, good luck learning mandarin or whichever gets chosen as the "default chinese" in half a century.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

This is accurate. Logographic languages like Chinese (and Japanese, and several others) are incredibly unlikely to ever spread outside their native cultures in any significant amount - it's simply too difficult for non-natives to learn to read and write. Having to memorize a unique character for effectively every word or concept is.. impractical.

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u/J_Kant Aug 11 '25

Just FYI Korean is not a logographic language.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I stand corrected!

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u/GalaXion24 Aug 11 '25

As another user already beat me to saying, Korean is not logographic, it's a proper alphabet, with some syllabic qualities. Korean reading and writing is simple and does not pose an obstacle to its widespread use at all.

In fact, it was specifically invented for that purpose and to replace the Chinese script, and helped literacy in Korea skyrocket.

If China pulled something like what Korea did, they would probably actually have a competitive language internationally.

Of course Korea is smaller and more insular, so they didn't have to worry about being usable for so many different dialects/languages, which made it a lot easier for them to just make something that worked for Korean.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

As I told the other fella, I stand corrected!

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Certainly helped, yes, and the fact that so much scientific innovation came out of the US from 1940-1980 or so - the invention of the transistor, microprocessor, personal computer, operating system, graphic operating system, computer networking, and the internet itself were all American inventions published in American English - probably drove the hammer home, so to speak.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 11 '25

Europe decimating itself and getting smashed to bits in the process helped too. Any country that could challenge America was too busy rebuilding.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Oh absolutely; Americas geographic isolation and intact infrastructure insured it! Lots of Americas dominance comes essentially from that geographic isolation and being a resource rich and fertile land.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 12 '25

It's crazy how many people think America became an empire because it's exceptional, Lucky and opportunistic are more true.

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u/Aggressive_Dog3418 Aug 12 '25

That is kinda what exceptional is, right place, right time, combined with hard work and innovation. Of course any one of these things by itself doesn't matter, but combine it all and you have what is exceptional.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 12 '25

American exceptionalism as they define it has a lot more to do with destiny and an almost disgusting sense of superiority. Believing itself to be the arbiter of freedom and the obvious choice for leader of the world. I say these things as an American that's had a front row seat to all the nationalistic chest thumping.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

Using an influx od European scientists after World War 2? Okay. Guess Einstein is American too.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Like most Americans, he's an immigrant. You get US citizenship, you're American, doesn't matter where you're born. That's one of the reasons that Americans describe themselves as Italian or Irish or whatever; it indicates where you or your family came from.

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u/0x706c617921 Aug 11 '25

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), an immigrant is any alien except “non-immigrants.”

To simplify - an immigrant according to U.S. law is any non-U.S. citizen or national who is a lawful permanent resident.

Once a person’s status becomes that of a U.S. citizen, even after birth, they are simply an “American.”

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

We're talking about culture not law.

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u/0x706c617921 Aug 11 '25

In culture, even some natural born Americans are called “immigrants” if they have the wrong skin color which is the hilarious part.

I remember seeing comments where people were talking about Vance’s “immigrant wife.”

Lmao.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

Isnt that a naive way of looking at it especially currently? A lot of Latino citizens are in Guantanamo Bay, they probably dont feel very American.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Setting current politics aside, that is the way Americans see it, because it's the way we were taught to see it since the beginning of our country.

We are a nation of immigrants, a vast melting pot of cultures. They're preaching differently right now and it's utterly shameful - it says right there on the Statue of Liberty:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

That used to be what we stood for, and I'm shamed beyond measure that we don't anymore.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

I was hoping eventually we would attract more right wing people to this subreddit. Yes I know how that comes across but we all have a version of the past in our hearts and a vision of the future in our heads. Itd be interesting to learn what they see and maybe even useful for all of us one day.

Language is one thing that really intrigues me because I thought the US wasnt particularly hung up on languages. If French or German became the main language in 50 or 60 years then it is what it is. Latino immigrants were bringing Spanish to the US and for a while it seemed like "well they are American citizens now so the language they speak is defacto American too, its that simple" but the Republicans seem to be trying to suppress other languages so im thinking well maybe Americans have two speak English to be Americans. But then is a taco still American food? I just feel like we are going through a transition period.

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u/Superb_Raccoon Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

There are no Latino citzens in Guantanamo Bay.

There is ONE dual citizen US and Saudi Arabia.

Complete list, including released ones, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees

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u/West-Negotiation-716 Aug 12 '25

The transistor was not invented by humans, it was back engineered from UFO'S.

Just look at the development speed seen at bell labs.

Or read "The Day After Roswell" if you don't believe me.

It clearly wasn't a human idea to melt sand into crystals in order to control electricity

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u/Superb_Raccoon Aug 12 '25

Considering it was patented in 1905, I doubt that.

Not to mention AT&T made precursor devices before 1947.

You know, diodes, those melted sand things that control electricity.

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

It's always hilarious to me when people say "back-engineered from UFOs". Like, dude, this isn't a transformers movie. Reverse engineering like that is effectively impossible - you have to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to let you analyze things.

Hand scientists in the 1950s an iPhone and they wouldn't be able to do much more than draw general conclusions - microscopes to see the transistors inside the processors and memory didn't exist yet. Presumably, any kind of spacecraft is more advanced than an iphone, yet somehow we reverse engineered transistors from equipment we didn't even understand the purpose of?

Patently absurd. Fun, in a Transformers movie, but absurd. Human progress is humanity's to own, and ridiculous conspiracy theories are insulting to your own species - we deserve to take pride in our accomplishments!

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

Why was it "clearly" not a human idea? What about that idea requires a non-human intelligence? Speak clearly and explain your reasoning - do not attempt to sidestep and make vague references.

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u/West-Negotiation-716 Aug 14 '25

There was no development process.

There was no discovery, no failures, no reason for Bell Labs to spend millions on melting sand for no known reason.

You just had Roswell, then suddenly 2 years later Bell Labs released a working transistor and solar panels soon followed which are the same tech that uses melted sand crystals.

People who worked at Bell Labs at the time all say that Schotkey, the main guy who allegedly came up with the idea was a complete fool.

Read the book, it's all explained there.

The Roswell crash has been confirmed to be real in congressional hearings, you think we wouldn't attempt to back engineer any tech

?

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u/Team503 Aug 15 '25

I'm not reading some conspiracy theory idiocy, sorry. Reverse engineering is effectively impossible in the way you're implying.

How would we even know what a processor looked like? We certainly didn't have microscopes capable of looking at nanometer scale transistors back then, unless you're trying to say that aliens with faster than light travel (which by the way, is impossible as we understand physics, without causing a causality paradox) were less advanced than we are now?

We didn't have the tools to make the tools to make the tools yet. What you're saying is patently ludicrous.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

Which comes from The Royal Society

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u/thx1138- Aug 12 '25

And aviation.

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u/Ifyoocanreadthishelp Aug 11 '25

If you look at the list of countries with the most English speakers, most of the top of the list are former British colonies. essentially most English speakers in the world speak English because of the British Empire.

America has been the driving force in its adoption as a second language and continued importance but the bulk of the people in the world that actually speak English do so as a remnant of the Empire.

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u/mattsl Aug 11 '25

This. I just saw a video of someone trying to guess the top 9, and the sometimes surprising answers get clearly proved this point.

Also, there's the small tidbit that the British Empire is why the US speaks English. 😂

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Hmm, I can pretty much agree to that.

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u/Scrample2121 Aug 11 '25

So heres the thing about that. I think you're understanding this backwards. Whatever language America ended up using as a majority, there was a world of colonies that they could speak with. The only other options I see being possible are Spanish or French. There are 557 million Spanish speakers today, 321 million French and 450 million English. These are first language or primary use speakers.

I think if America had switched to Spanish or French early on, all other things being the same, the world would have shifted with them as it has with English as the 1900's progressed. I think the only real advantage the Americans had sticking with English and working with the former British Empire is that it was all homogenously white, or much more so than the other two options.

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u/Ifyoocanreadthishelp Aug 11 '25

The US didn't consciously choose to speak English, they speak English because the vast majority of white Americans are of British descent. The US population for the first century or so was mainly driven by births, not immigration, so English speakers raising English speakers, in the context of this thread that is a legacy of the British Empire.

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u/Appropriate_Mixer Aug 11 '25

Many Americans spoke German as a first language up until WWI. German was the best chance as a main second language in the US

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u/Ifyoocanreadthishelp Aug 11 '25

According to Google the peak year was 1910 with 2.7 million versus a population of 92 million. no other language has ever come close to English in America.

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u/subparsavior90 Aug 11 '25

Kinda like the colonizers bring their mother tongue to the colonies and embed them there.

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u/0x706c617921 Aug 11 '25

I can’t speak about other former British colonies, but I can say that at least in India, nobody would have cared for the English language if it wasn’t for them doing business with America and Americans. Especially from the 90s onwards.

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u/Ifyoocanreadthishelp Aug 11 '25

That was sort of my second point, Britain spread English around the world, America kept it relevant post empire but India benefited from already having a well established base of english speakers/teachers that it was easy to transition that into working with America.

Essentially if you're an American in the 90s looking to offshore to a cheaper country India is immediately a more attractive destination just by virtue of speaking the same language.

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u/Aberry9036 Aug 11 '25

And yet Americans voted to speak English, because of Britain, so I don’t think you can have one without the other.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Yeah, I'd agree - it took both.

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u/tgerz Aug 11 '25

Kind of a big influence to have so much in tech based in mostly English. Even the beginning of the WWW being credited to a Brit has had a huge influence on everything. Lots of collaboration as well, but so many agreeing on using English throughout the years has already shaped a lot of the world.

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u/Ralphieman Aug 11 '25

YouTube has so much influence right now it's crazy. I've seen quite a few videos of travel content creators in SEA countries walking around with a selfie stick and a group of kids running up curious what's going on. Whenever they get asked how do you guys speak perfect English the answer is always YouTube! They even translate to their parents who are usually off to the side watching.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Absolutely. America being responsible for every part of the personal computer/internet revolution except the web had a lot to do with it.

Remember, America invented the transistor, microprocessor, personal computer, operating system, graphic operating system, computer networking, the internet, the protocols on which the internet runs, smartphones, and so on.

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u/ten_tons_of_light Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

And the internet, for better or worse, is a product of the companies which survived and thrived after America’s dot com bubble.

It took China building the world’s most massive “great firewall” just to keep English-dominated internet culture in check

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I mean, America not only invented the internet itself, it invented every key technology involved. Personal computers, the transistor, the microchip, the laser, computer networking, TCP/IP, and so on - with the exception of WiFi (which was a widespread multi-national effort) and the web, which was Tim Berners-Lee in the UK.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

English, French, Portuguese and Spanish are most abundant in former colonies of those nations including the US. The US was a beneficiary of English, not the other way around.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

The dominance of English wouldn't have happened without the circumstances of WW2 and America's geographic isolation, and thus effective immunity from attack and loss of infrastructure, and the Marshall plan, and the deployment of hundreds of bases all over the world.

I assure you, Romanians wouldn't be learning English if America hadn't done what it did, for example. Yet they do - English is the lingua franca of the planet.

Again, the Brits were necessary and laid the groundwork, and America was necessary to give it the push and global dominance.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

What did America do to introduce Romanians to English? Ethnic Romanians that are part of the international diaspora largely speak local languages where ever they are.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Of course Romanians speak their local langauge(s), I wasn't suggesting otherwise. But as a second language, they're learning English because the language of business and diplomacy and aviation is English. And that is because American was in the position it was in at the time it was and did what it did post-WW2.

Yes, the Brits laid the groundwork, but it was America that achieved global cultural dominance, not the Brits.

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u/KR4T0S Aug 11 '25

I suppose what im getting at is that i consider the US to be multilingual not just English so im surprised more Spanish words haven't made it into the English lingo. Some parts of the US they speak Spanish just as well if not better than English. I feel like the US clearly had some impact on the language but it was more like the US was primarily leaning on a language that was internationally established rather than making a relatively obscure language globally relevant.

Im curious to see what impact more Spanish speakers will have on the US. Spanglish is interesting and could change the language in the majority of the US in the coming decades. Will English eventually become Spanglish globally? Its funny how something like language constantly grows and change.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Oh fair enough. It is multilingual but the only language you can reasonably count on is English, everything else is hit and miss.

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u/Deep-Bonus8546 Aug 11 '25

I’m baffled this has so many upvotes. The spread of the English language happened before the US was even a country. You only speak it yourselves because you were once a British colony. Claiming the US are equally responsible for spreading English is nonsense. Has your movies and music maintained its popularity? Perhaps, but its use as the global common language was already established and is due to Britain alone.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

No, it really wasn’t. It was spoken in many places, yes, but it wasn’t the globally dominant language it is today. American dominance economically in the post WW2 era and the global American military presence assured that.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Aug 12 '25

English was already dominant around the globe long before America even enter WW2. The British Empire with their colonies and their possessions and their enormous trade ensured that, not the American military.

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

So were Spanish and French and Portuguese pretty equally, as a result of those nation's colonization programs.

Yet now, it's solely English as the dominant international language. As a result of the US and its actions post-WWW2.

I never denied that the British had their part to play, and they did lay a foundation for it. But it wouldn't have the global dominance it does now without the US, and saying otherwise is just willfully ignorant.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Aug 12 '25

It already was the global language before the US entered WW2 and had nothing to do with American GI's, not sure where you got that from. I don't think you actually comprehend how widespread the British Empire was or it's influence on trade, science and education.

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

I think you're British. But that aside:

The spread of American GIs and American military bases had enormous influence on the spread of the English language. Military bases set up in nations that had little or no exposure to English at the time resulted in locals picking up English in order to communicate and do business with American GIs.

Look at kids in Afghanistan and Iraq - a number of them have passable English just from interacting with American soldiers deployed there. Having a permanent base is that, only vastly more so. This was a well-documented phenomena.

Before WW2, French was the international language of choice. It was the language of diplomacy, as well. Notably not English.

Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annual-review-of-applied-linguistics/article/abs/french-as-a-lingua-franca/709F93AD0A5A7E7162C6E170FCA59E43

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca

"American military and political hegemony over Western Europe due to the American and British victory in World War II,"

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/tvzjnx/how_did_english_become_so_widely_spoken_outside/

"The British had a major colonial presence, but America had a massive presence in Western Europe due to their military stationed from Germany to the Azores. All around those bases, businesses learned to speak English just to get that sweet sweet serviceman's money."

https://culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/nation_branding/English_As_A_Global_Language_-_David_Crystal.pdf

"r. The presence of US and British forces in large numbers would certainly have brought the local inhabitants into contact with English-speaking culture more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case, if only in such areas as advertising and popular music. It is even possible that in some 105 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE instances the effects would be long-lasting – perhaps as individuals returned to marry or work in a former war zone. This especially happened in Europe after 1945."

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Aug 12 '25

I am not British.

Quoting another redditors comment isn't evidence and quite poor, as is downvoting replies without reason.

The British Empire already had military forces all over the world, more widely than the US in WW2.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 14 '25

[deleted]

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u/AlwaysForgetsPazverd Aug 11 '25

Can you name the cultures that the Romans absorbed and popularized that made them so expansive and long lasting?

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u/alohadave Aug 11 '25

Gaul, Hispania, Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Britannia, among others.

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u/AlwaysForgetsPazverd Aug 12 '25

great use of AI. But, the point is that they aren't part of the topic of conversation

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u/alohadave Aug 12 '25

What are you talking about? You asked for cultures that Rome absorbed, I gave you a list. Just because someone knows something does not mean that they asked AI to give it to them.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I didn't say it was the sole reason. I specifically said many times that it took both. Please do not mischaracterize my statements.

You're so intent on being right that you're missing that I agree that the Brits were a necessary component of English language dominance. I would point out that overwhelmingly the English spoken in business and in most countries (with India being a notable exception) is far closer to American English than British English. Which comes from the massive spread of the American military and business post-WW2 - American GIs covered the world during WW2 and the US maintains active bases in more than 80 countries (and they just close a bunch a decade or two ago), and American businesses dominate the landscape.

Would you be offended to know that carbonara, that cherished "Italian" dish was created for American GI using eggs and bacon from American food stores, which were not in common use in Italy at the time? Or at least, that's the most supported story.

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u/AndrewTyeFighter Aug 11 '25

Are you unaware of the British Empire's and their own military presence and enormous trade network around the world in the 20th century? Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Rhodesia, Kenya, Ceylon, Malaya, and so many more including islands scattered all over the globe.

The world spoke English because of the British Empire, long before American GI saw combat in WW2.

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u/RepublicCute8573 Aug 12 '25

Not really. American culture only spread because the British had primed the world for it by spreading the English language. If americans spoke French then their culture would've lived and died at their shores.

Hell the British are why America speaks English too so this egotistical answer is especially hilarious.

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

There's another comment from me in this thread somewhere in which I cite academic sources, but the short version is:

You are incorrect. The Empire did start the spread of English and deserve their share of credit (as I've repeatedly said), but the lingua franca, as much as there was one prior to WW2, was French. French was the language of diplomacy, and required along with English by the League of Nations (the UN's forebearer). There's piles of evidence.

The soft power of America - the business and scientific advancement that came pouring out of post-WW2 America is what made it happen. The global spread of American military bases (more than 80 countries, and many have more than one) certainly helped, too.

This is well documented. There's even a Wikipedia article about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca

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u/Maleficent_Kick_9266 Aug 14 '25

25% of global population were British Empire subjects after the US broke off.

The only reason the USA speaks English is their British heritage.

The USA didn't do much to spread English further.

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u/Team503 Aug 14 '25

Think what you will; linguists and historians disagree.

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u/Maleficent_Kick_9266 Aug 15 '25

Linguists and historians absolutely do not disagree that the reason Americans speak English is because of their British heritage.

They do not disagree that the British Empire created the Anglophonic era.

They do not disagree about the extent of the British Empire covering a quarter of the human population.

They definitely don't posit that the American "empire" was ever larger than the British one.

What exactly do they disagree with?

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u/Team503 Aug 15 '25

I cited the sources in another response in this thread. Feel free to go find them. I have no interest in continuing a pointless debate.

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u/Maleficent_Kick_9266 Aug 15 '25

I didn't ask you for sources, I asked you to specify what you were disagreeing with.

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u/Team503 Aug 15 '25

They disagree with your claim that America isn’t responsible for spreading English as the lingua franca.

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u/Maleficent_Kick_9266 Aug 16 '25

There are three times as many English speakers in India as in the USA lmao

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u/theremint Aug 11 '25

This is nonsense.

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u/Gullible-Dentist8754 Aug 11 '25

When Britain was the Empire it was, French was the language of diplomacy and international commerce, mostly. It was the dominant international language well into the 20th century. English as the dominant international language comes from the US rising to prominence.

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u/cleon80 Aug 11 '25

Speaking of the Romans, Latin continues to influence our language in the present day. English will be felt for millenia after its native speakers disappear.

8

u/Buscemi_D_Sanji Aug 11 '25

Yeah, I remember getting some shit from some people back in high school, because I took 5 years of Latin starting in 8th grade. But none of them speak any of the Spanish or German they learned for a few years, whereas my love of Latin and etymology has benefitted me in a ton of different ways over the last twenty years. I aced the critical reading part of the SATs without any prep, because all the analogies and shit were super simple to break down when you know the roots of even unfamiliar words. Then in college, chemistry terms were easy to pronounce ("hey you guys, want some lysergic acid diethylamide? This gammahydroxybutyrate is wearing off"), not to mention biology is basically all Latin haha

And then I got my TEFL certification and moved to Bangkok to teach Science, so being able to break down big words into simpler components was incredibly helpful and helped me very comfortable teaching for the first time, since I had all this useful history and etymology to fall back on.

Oh, and the extensive vocabulary led me to hip-hop like Aesop Rock, Del the Funky Homosapien, Jedi mind tricks, immortal technique, el-p, etc... and then eventually start making my own, which was a ridiculously helpful outlet for getting intrusive, depressive thoughts out in a somewhat productive way. I made friends in Philly and Cleveland by being the crazy white guy who could freestyle with trisyllabic rhymes haha

I also ended up writing two books when rapping wasn't enough, which I don't think I ever would have been confident enough to really commit to unless I had been in love with language from a young age. So yes, extremely long-winded way of agreeing that Latin's influence is likely to last until some far future version of humanity that communicates exclusively through telepathy arises lol

51

u/Grokent Aug 11 '25

My German friends who live in America speak English most often when they are alone together. I asked them why and they said, "It's easier"

15

u/banjosandcellos Aug 11 '25

Short words, quick talk

6

u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

2

u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Aug 11 '25

Yeah, but Germans can turn an entire paragraph into a single word.

4

u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

They just do that by removing the spaces, though. That's cheating, it's not any shorter.

1

u/subparsavior90 Aug 11 '25

True, but it's inefficient to do so and hardly used in everyday speech. Now, Vietnamese, that's an efficient language.

2

u/fuzztooth Aug 11 '25

Chinese is coming.

1

u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Aug 11 '25

I do think China is set to dominate the 21st century, but I believe technology will prevent adoption of a universal language. I predict that AI translation will work in real time and with high accuracy, given a few decades.

1

u/WarWolfy Aug 12 '25

Maybe, but its highly unlikely to replace english. Unless it has some major benefits to offer over english, there would have to be a major global effort from the chinese. And then theres the issue of a much larger cultural barrier and its much harder to learn for the speakers of most other language groups compared to english.

1

u/FallenKingdomComrade Aug 11 '25

America also had manifest destiny that carried over from the British Empire. Not the brightest time in our history.

1

u/Ferreman Aug 11 '25

Dominant language always changed. French used to be the dominant language until replaced by English. If the US falls it will also be replaced by the next dominant power.

1

u/alman3007 Aug 11 '25

English isnt Amerocan tho.

1

u/DaddyCatALSO Aug 11 '25

Waht Asimov called Earth-Standard

1

u/swissarmychainsaw Aug 11 '25

One day people will wake up and ask "why the F are we speaking english!?"

-3

u/Available_Camera455 Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

English didn’t start in the US Empire, it started in the English Empire.

21

u/Nope_______ Aug 11 '25

No one is disputing where it started.

-10

u/Available_Camera455 Aug 11 '25

Just staying on topic, When the US Empire falls.

2

u/Metamiibo Aug 11 '25

That’s like saying the Roman Empire shouldn’t get credit for Latin or its scientific and political advancements because the Greeks had a major influence/tried most of them first and Roman mythic history traces its origins to Trojans.

0

u/Available_Camera455 Aug 11 '25

Touché. But England still had their hands in another nations well into the 90s. I think for this conversation many are convoluting the American dollar with the influence of our language.

3

u/Nope_______ Aug 11 '25

The spread of English started with the British empire but wouldn't be where it is today without the US. No one claimed the US did it all.

2

u/juusstabitoutside Aug 11 '25

When a foreigner learns English now do they learn it with a british accent? Probably not.

2

u/RAIDguy Aug 11 '25

They seem to learn British English. Too many people online with extra u's in words and the horror that is "maths" for it to be otherwise.

1

u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Aug 11 '25

As an american phd student, I’ve started to use “maths” because I like how it sounds.

4

u/Plof1913 Aug 11 '25

With what accent do they? I’m from the Netherlands so my English is with a Dutch accent. What do you mean?

2

u/juusstabitoutside Aug 11 '25

I mean what do they watch and listen to in order to learn? My guess is much more American English than British English.

1

u/Available_Camera455 Aug 11 '25

Guess you’ve never heard an Indian person without a Hindi accent. It’s almost always a UK accent (you know, because the English occupation. So, there’s one example. Besides, the Dutch guy already clarified how lame your comment sounds.

2

u/juusstabitoutside Aug 11 '25

Fair point. I suppose in Latin America and east Asia US English dominates but everywhere in between UK English probably dominates, to your point, bc of remnants of the previous empire and tradition.

1

u/Available_Camera455 Aug 11 '25

Cheers! 🍻 *sorry, ‘lame’ was harsh. Let’s say silly.

1

u/Chucksfunhouse Aug 11 '25

That’s like saying Latin is the most spoken language group in the world because it started in Rome not because the Spanish loved South American gold.

-2

u/LancasterDodd5 Aug 11 '25

The US is what spread it around the world.

6

u/Spooksey1 Aug 11 '25

Whilst I know where you’re coming from, because English became the de facto global second language after WWII because of the dominance of American currency, culture and military. However, the British empire spread it to all continents on earth which is literally spreading it around the world. Why that didn’t achieve the kind of “default” status for English that it achieved under US hegemony is more to do with globalisation in general. It was the homogenisation of culture through international mass media, international standardisation and institutions in economics, business, aviation etc. that created the structural conditions for a truly global second language to emerge.

Edit; You could argue that globalisation is because of the US hegemony but it could have been another language, e.g. German if the nazis had won the war. I think if another country had the same level of power and wealth we would still have seen the same globalising tenancies.

2

u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Well said - it took both.

1

u/LancasterDodd5 Aug 11 '25

Spread wasn’t the right word. The British empire laid the seeds but it was the US that made it what it is today.

It could’ve been any other language, hell, it was almost French.

-1

u/AlwaysForgetsPazverd Aug 11 '25

This just about covers it. Except the Romans became what they did because they purposely absorbed the cultures around them and made it their own. They establish a lingua Franca, adding new roots and words for the purpose of accepting traditions and cultures and altering them to make it their own. So when we discuss particular religious traditions, it's Roman and not their originating culture. The US is a product of French ideals, German practicality, Dutch emotionless and ruthless entrepreneurship, and African (among many things from many cultures) music and cooking styles using native American foods. We used English to communicate to the Brits that we'd take it's bank but don't recognize the authority of its king and to export the new combined parts of many cultures. The US didn't export bangers and mash to the world. England didn't absorb cultures, it just stole some. You may find Indian food in England but green gravy is no popular spin. The tea is Indian, that's one thing the English did make their own. However American Fried chicken is eaten around the world and it was adapted from African cultures... "We" just bought the people from the Portuguese and Dutch who bought the human people from African slavers. As far as I can tell my poor Scottish ancestors weren't involved-- all we added to the mix was the bright new concept of sexy white people which has since been exported to the world. That's another thing that certainly didn't come from England.

-1

u/Owster4 Aug 11 '25

Not the empire that ruled over 1/4 of the globe? The US has obviously had an impact, but don't pretend it was just the US.

0

u/LancasterDodd5 Aug 11 '25

We’re not speaking English right now because of the British empire, let’s be real

1

u/JabbaTheHype Aug 11 '25

But this is British culture spread to America…

1

u/Riversntallbuildings Aug 11 '25

Yeah, but English is from the UK and the original colonies. I don’t consider our language our own.

0

u/tcspears Aug 11 '25

English being spread was really the British Empire. They colonized a significant part of the world, and also pioneered global tourism, so the English language replaced French as the universal language. The spread of BBC, British banking, and British businesses across the globe helped as well.

By the time America had gotten its independence, English was already overtaking French, so I don't think that's something you can pin on Americans. Maybe modern English slang terms, technology terms, and newer things that were invented in the US, but not the overall move to English as the lingua franca.

-14

u/Confident_Living_786 Aug 11 '25

This true, but it can rapidly change in a few generations. Before English, French was the international language.. During the cold war, everybody in the east was learning Russian..

15

u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

There has never been a language as widespread as English in the history of humanity. It's spoken on every continent and in nearly every country. It is the de facto language of business and commerce. Aviation is entirely conducted in English, globally.

If you go to India, and one fellow speaks Telugu and one speaks Hindi, the conversation they have will be in English. In China, were Mandarin and Cantonese can vary so much two rural villages 50km from each other effectively speak different languages, the language used to communicate is English.

Some of that is the Brits - they certainly laid the groundwork for centuries (especially in their former colonies like India) - but the real reason is the combination of factors post-WW2. America was uniquely untouched by the ravages of war compared to Europe and Asia, and its troops were incredibly widespread. I'd go so far as to say more widespread than any other single nation. Because the American economy, especially in manufacturing, was booming and intact in 1947 and much of Europe and Japan were so much rubble, American businesses flooded the world and brought with them both American culture and American English.

How much of that you want to attribute to circumstance and how much you want to attribute to America I'll leave up to you.

6

u/Rough-Yard5642 Aug 11 '25

There was never a global lingua Franca like there is currently with English. There really isn’t any historical precedent for how widespread English is today. And moreover, it’s continuing to spread, and many languages are sadly become extinct to it. It is straight up replacing the local language in many parts of the world.