From the Eurobarometer on Europeans and Languages, English is the most common foreign language at 34%, followed by German at 12% and French at 11%, and finally Spanish and Russian at 5%. On page 10 there is a table of "languages most commonly used". They are, in order:
For good or ill the imperial language of this age is English. As the sun, having already sat on the British empire, declines in the west of the American, I can't help but wonder what family of English-based (or, more accurately, Germanic-based) languages scholars will study a millenium or two from now. And I can't help but wonder what the lingua franca of that age will be. I would not be at all surprised if it were some dialect of Chinese. Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.
It might only make sense for German and French given the number of first- and second-language speakers (see my Eurobarometer summary elsewhere on this thread).
Then again, ET is too small to fragment in that way. On the other hand, does deference to the < 13% English monolinguals justify leaving out the 53% of EU residents who don't feel they can hold a conversation in English? Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
