A lingua franca is useful and probably inevitable. The downside is language and cultural loss. Works in translation are rarely quite as good, especially humor and wordplay. This is why various countries have "local language quota" rules for media; although derided by English speakers and HN, they're a way to keep the local language, culture and identity alive.
Apriori assuming that those things are somehow intrinsically valuable. These decisions (eg. language quotas) are made by armchair intellectuals with career/identity investments in the said language. Language evolution ignores them, but they can be annoying in the interim.
Firstly, everything is only valuable in the sense of being valuable to someone or some people; nothing is intrinsically valuable.
Secondly, everyone has a career/identity investment in a language.. their first language. The one they work in, went to school in, read in, talk to their family in, consume literature in. (I suppose HN devalues literature as well).
For monoglot anglophones struggling to understand the concept, imagine if the US declared its official language was now Standard Mandarin. There would be riots. Heck, I've seen Americans get mad at the mere use of Spanish, the country's second language.
>Firstly, everything is only valuable in the sense of being valuable to someone or some people; nothing is intrinsically valuable.
Agreed, so when tech and globalisation are pulling towards unification for practical reasons - your argument reduces to "I'm going to force others to use what I like because I don't like the decisions people are making".
I'm not arguing we should make anything official or force anything.
Yes ? If everyone suddenly started using English instead of Croatian it would be a net positive in my book. I'd probably get a lot better at casual English which is something I notice talking with non-Croatian speakers outside of work.
I'm not saying we should force adoption of English ! Tech and globalisation are pushing in that direction in the "west". People I see pushing back the most are "intellectual elites" invested in the language, presenting their value judgements as objective arguments.
But everyone wouldn't suddenly start using English, that's not feasible. Is everyone in your family fluent in English (my family is not)? In every country, there are people who couldn't adapt and disproportionally so in vulnerable groups. Suddenly, you would be in a country where you don't know the language. Everyone would be immigrants in their own country.
Protection of national languages is as much on the agenda of politicians, including right-wing populists. In your view, are the songs, stories, books and plays in Croatian the property of the elites and not of every Croatian?
You say we wouldn't force it, but if we left it to Hollywood etc. they would force it. Leaving issues for the markets to decide freely brushes aside all the negative externalities.
