If the whole world was forced to speak 1 language...
Imagine if it was illegal to speak any other language except for this language. However, there would be a period where all the other languages would adopt the characteristics of this language and slowly transform into it (allowing an easy "glide" into fluency). Which language would be chosen?
English at this point is sort of a lingua franca for business and other things, but I don't know if it would be the right choice. There are many countries (Japan and China are two easy examples) that have difficulties producing basic sounds like "L" and "V" or some of our vowels.
It would be English. It is the second-most spoken language in the world (after Mandarin, which is mostly focused around China + the difference isn't much) and the most wide-spread. Plus English is the lingua franca, and in many countries people are educated to a reasonable level in English so the transition to fluency would be less hard. Also English uses the Latin alphabet which is the most wide-spread and which would also make the transition easier for more people.
If this were a debate I think most countries would choose English
Personally I love all languages specially European languages so anything would do, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Romanian
Esperanto, as previously mentioned, springs to mind first.
Taking the epic failure of Esperanto, however, English is the (probable) main choice, followed by French, German, and Spanish (in no order) then Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Italian. It's so easy. Same goes for Spanish.
I think it would suck if everyone was forced to speak English because of the history behind the language and its "dominance"…
