It’s time for a new name for english

There is considerable speculation now about the continued domination of English as the lingua franca of Europe, with some hoping — probably in vain — that French may take its place. As only about 1% of Europeans sans Britain will be “native” English speakers, there is some basis for conjecture.

But given that it remains the language of business and shifting to any other one will be tiresome and time-consuming, English looks ready to stay — even if it adopts European usages and syntax without the watchful eye of its native speakers post-Brexit.

After all, English as a language outlasted its main propagators in India and developed a lexicon of its own, and the same can be said of the anglophone nations of North America, Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean.

Eurenglish, Scandlish, franglais or Deutschlish would be merely part of a hoary tradition of localised English.

If anything, it may soon be time to bestow English a new moniker as the ethnic group that gave its name to the language —which was of Germanic extraction anyway — is in a hopeless minority among its speakers. And the English language that the purists promote is mostly incomprehensible to a majority of its other speakers.

The advantage of current English over Esperanto is that it is already spoken by millions; all it needs is a more representative nomenclature.