I guess both questions are interesting. Which would be the ideal lingua franca on a clean slate, and which would be the best one considering the state of the world.

Flexibility in communication because of how large the vocabulary is and how many different languages we have roots in.

I get the Imperialist connotation, but I still think English would be best because it’s just so widespread. I’ve traveled quite a bit and it seems most everywhere people speak at least a little bit of English. It also has far more

And easy to imagine that it would help mutual understanding and communication immensely. It's harder to hate people you can make connections with.

Coming back to mz's initial take, though, I also often think about this. Just the idea of being able to communicate with everyone in a language you're fluent in, no matter where you are in the world is so sexy.

And we haven't even talked about languages with dual as third grammatical number

That is kinda what I'm talking about. Like I wouldn't be able to explain how pluralization works other than instinctively knowing what's the right plural for each case by case word. English slapping an "s" at the end is a breeze.