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Top 10 Languages - Rankings in 2050 | ||
Tags: Language Importance | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6034 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes  Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 9 of 108 30 September 2009 at 3:01am | IP Logged |
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English, French, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German and.....Yiddish??? :D
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| dagojr Groupie United States Joined 5593 days ago 56 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 108 30 September 2009 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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In addition to the BRIC article I linked to before, I also found the following study from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy firm.
http://www.pwc.com/fi_FI/fi/julkaisut/tiedostot/world_in_205 0.pdf NOTE: Remove space between 5 and last 0 If you don't feel like reading through the study I have the projected size of economies relative to the US. (The United States is indexed at 100. A score of, for example, 10, indicates that a particular economy is 10% the size of the US economy.) Relative Size of Economies in 2050 China - 129 United States - 100 India - 88 Brazil - 26 Japan - 19 Russia/Indonesia/Mexico - 17 Germany/France/UK - 14 For comparison, Relative Size of Economies in 2007 United States - 100 Japan - 32 China - 23 Germany - 22 UK - 18 France - 17 Brazil/Russia - 8 India/Mexico - 7 Indonesia - 3 Edited by dagojr on 30 September 2009 at 3:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6385 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 11 of 108 30 September 2009 at 3:52am | IP Logged |
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I agree with the original poster on almost all of the picks. English isn't going anywhere because of the difficulty of Chinese and the fact that it's already there and would take a long time to dislodge. The only one I really question is Indonesian. I have a hard time seeing that in 2050 it is somehow more important than Japanese, Korean, German, and French. GDP for all of those countries will probably still be higher than Indonesia, and I can't really see Indonesian becoming a lingua franca any time soon.
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| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 12 of 108 30 September 2009 at 4:03am | IP Logged |
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The only way I see Korean becoming more important is if North Korea ACTUALLY does something or if the two reunite (within a five-ten year period.) Say the North and South did reunite, the South would have to subsidize the North because they're so poor. It'd be similar to East and West Germany. If they do reunite, they'd have the largest standing army in the world, wouldn't they?
About Brazil and Portugese, that's iffy to me. Who knows if they'll take off or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5612 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 13 of 108 30 September 2009 at 8:32am | IP Logged |
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On the whole, I'd agree on most of your opinions about the rankings, though I'm afraid that, maybe Indonesian/Malay wouldn't be seriously included in the Top 10 list. When it comes to India, frankly, we're even gratified to see that, in 2050, the population of China would've continued to decline gradually, while that of India would've increased immoderately and taken China's place to be the most populous and crowded country in the world. No doubt the population explosion must be a thorny problem to tackle, actually China's already suffered a great deal from the explosion (from 600 million up to 1,300 million). Also, it'd be a big drag on India's development as well, it's almost pointless for India to purchase many kinds of advanced weapons from US, UK, France, Russia, and Israel, it should've spent its money mainly on the infrastructural construction, the sanitary condition, the caste/race conflict, the living standard of common people, the development of other industrial fields except for IT (softwares & games). Of course, no offence against India and Indonesia.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 14 of 108 30 September 2009 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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Not to mention Spanish is quickly becoming a very important language here in the United
States, which is by all measures a superpower. I've thought it over and my (serious) predictions for 2050 would be: 1. English 2. Mandarin Chinese 3. Spanish 4. Arabic 5. French 6. Portuguese 7. Russian 8. Japanese 9. German 10. Korean Edited by Levi on 30 September 2009 at 7:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6346 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 15 of 108 30 September 2009 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
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Most foreigners living in China usually don't bother learning any Chinese; they can't even order a cup of coffee after living there for years. On the other hand, Chinese people who want higher paying job all learn English. In India, it's even worst since English is a lingua franca.
In Russia, it seems to be the opposite: Russians do not want to learn English and foreigners have to learn the local language to get by since they don't even write it anywhere. The same is true to a lesser extent to western European countries like Germany. For these reasons, I think only English and some European languages will remain "important" in the sense of "you can get by in other countries knowing them". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5580 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 16 of 108 02 October 2009 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
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I think the problem with most of these predictions is that they assume that in forty years the state of the world will be much as it is now, only richer. The predictions fail to take into account that modern civilization is in large part built on an abundance of cheap oil. There will be much less of that in forty years than there is now, and this will probably mean less travel and less globalization.
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