There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
The Lingua Franca didn’t change because someone decided to change it, it slowly happened. You could argue it would be nice for EU if the (local) Lingua Franca would be the language of a large member state, but I don’t see it happening by force. Probably better to just leave it to be English, even if the Irish are the only native speakers in the EU.
This. It’s the same with forcing „wokeness“ on people. To safely implement change, the transition needs to be slow and steady.
Ireland has English and Irish.
Irish? Isn’t it called Gaelic?
Gaelic is the language family and includes Scottish, Welsh, and another language I believe (Brittain from Brittainy?). Kind of like how Spanish and French are romance languages or English and German are Germanic languages.