Today the international language is clearly english, but how was it in the past...

Today the international language is clearly english, but how was it in the past? Was french ever a international language? Did international languages even exist before? What language did the germans and brits communicate with during the christmas truce?

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French was lingua franca and Befror it had been latin.

It was French once, but mostly among the elites. Before that the common person never had the opportunity to use/learn it.

the language of diplomacy before about the 1950s was French. It would have been the lingua franca when travelling but would not be anywhere near as widely spoken among Europeans as English is today.

*Before french

>Lingua Franca

Take a guess

There was no language this international, only regional lingua francas

So during the christmas truce, did brits and krauts speak french to each other?

They spoke old Germanic

Yeah, after all 100 heard ago is a long time

no, as I said it wasn't spoken as widely as English is among Europeans today. If both sides' commanders or generals talked to each other though, then yes they would probably use French.

English was the language of traders and merchants and shit. French was for aristocrats.

>English was the language of traders and merchants
No, not really, if you want a language for trade beside French, itd be Italian.

In the middle ages yeah. 1700s - present English dominated though.

>1700s
uh, no. mid-20th century.

the etymology of "lingua franca" has nothing to do with the French language p.ê.h

Uh, no. After the war of Spanish succession and Act of Union, English was catapulted in importance.

In British territories. The average person anywhere else would not have spoken it.

The average person anywhere would have spoken their native language and nothing else. But if you were a trader you spoke English.

Thanks for being sane Britbong

but that's not true

Malay, here.

The gook pretty much nailed it.
Latin was probably the most universal language there ever was, considering everyone who didn't shovel dung for a living used it daily.

except for the fact that 99% of the world population shoveled dung for a living.

>p.ê.h
I like it!

there's more places in the world outside the Mediterranean

I would think English is a far more universal language than Latin ever was.

Every country on Earth teaches English, and usually it's mandatory

And they didn't matter at all, contributing little more than shoveling dung and not interacting with anyone outside their little Dungville. Everyone who could read and write used latin more than their own language.

what a bunch of cucks

Fair point, mine is an Eurocentric point of view. Thinking globally, English wins indeed.

If English is "muh world language", how come 6 billion people don't speak it?

see

>his country is so full of brainwashed Anglomaniacs it's literally committing language suicide

???

Dutch is really close to English, as is German and the Scandi languages. It's annoying when Those people brag about their nation's high English proficiency when the main reason for that is the fact that the languages are close rather than anything to do with their collective intelligence.

>how was it in the past?
There wasn't an international lingua franca before English. At some point the elites spoke Latin, but a regular pleb going to a different country would not be able to speak Latin with the local plebs. People would probably just adapt to the local languages along important trade routes or develop a pidgin to communicate with each other, as was the case along the Mediterranean with Sabir (the OG lingua Franca, which gave rise to the term).

>Was french ever a international language?
No.

>Did international languages even exist before?
Not really.

>What language did the germans and brits communicate with during the christmas truce?
Mostly English. A lot of the Germans already spoke English at the time, and I assume that they translated for those that didn't.

>Was french ever a international language?

It was the main language of diplomacy for a while but not really an international language as english is today.

The majority of the french population didn't even spoke french until the mid XIXth century.

>No.
Yes, kinda at least a lot of diplomacy and stuff was done in French
>A lot of the Germans already spoke English at the time
100% false

>Was french ever a international language?

Do you understand what "lingua franca" means?

>The majority of the french population didn't even spoke french until the mid XIXth century.

stop propagating this meme

Just because no one spoke the standard dialect yet doesn't mean no one spoke french.

>The term lingua franca originated as the name of a particular language that was used around the eastern Mediterranean Sea as the main language of commerce and diplomacy, from late medieval times, especially during the Renaissance era, to the 18th century. At that time, Italian-speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman Empire and a simplified version of Italian, including many loan words from Greek, Old French, Portuguese, Occitan, and Spanish as well as Arabic and Turkish came to be widely used as the "lingua franca" (in the generic sense used) of the region.

>In Lingua Franca (the specific language), lingua means a language, as in Portuguese and Italian, and franca is related to phrankoi in Greek and faranji in Arabic as well as the equivalent Italian. In all three cases, the literal sense is "Frankish", but the name was actually applied to all Western Europeans during the late Byzantine Empire.

It didn't refer to "french language"

>“Almost always, it was the Germans who at least indirectly invited the truce,” writes Stanley Weintraub in his book “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.” [...] many of their troops had worked in Great Britain before the war and could speak English.
history.com/news/world-war-is-christmas-truce-100-years-ago
encasedinsteel.co.uk/2014/12/19/christmas-truce/
I found a literary source too. But I can't find the excerpt online. Honestly

...

Obviously latin. It was used by catholic church and it was the most relevant thing in europe then

I fucking hate English. I'll never be fluent in this barbaric language.