HAVING lasted for 80 generations as the lingua franca of literate Europeans, Latin was uniquely positioned to benefit from the invention of the printing press, blotting out all other languages since every reader could be reached with the same texts. Yet as publishing took off, Latin retreated, outmanoeuvred by racy new books in French.
There is no predicting the rise and fall of international vernaculars. However, as Nicholas Ostler exhaustively documents in The Last Lingua Franca, history shows that no language will dominate the world conversation forever. Global English is just a temporary phenomenon. More provocatively, Ostler argues that, once the dominance of English has waned, no lingua franca will replace it, since technology will enable instant translation. But his evidence is scant. It’s equally easy to imagine world language adapting to that of computers.
The Last Lingua Franca: English until the return of Babel
Allen Lane/Walker & Company