tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6124 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French
| Message 17 of 108 02 October 2009 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
I don't like to think that far in advance. The prospect of being 65 years old in 2050 doesn't sound too inviting, and I doubt it will really matter to me what languages are important then. Its more relevant to debate what languages are/will be important within the space of 20 years.
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Isarin Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5643 days ago 34 posts - 41 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Japanese Studies: Czech, Mandarin, Italian
| Message 18 of 108 02 October 2009 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
I believe Indonesian has everything it takes to be one of the top 10
in 2050. I totally agree with dagojr that it has to be on the list (if the list has to include 10 languages). It has got a broad base - about 200 mio speakers in several countries already, it is apparently pretty easy to learn and we are talking about countries where a lot will be going on in the next 41 years.
In my opinion a list of 10 languages is just too long, you'd never be able to shut up the fights about who gets to be a backbencher and who not (Portuguese seems to be contestable, but apart from that no one is challenging your assessment up to #6), just because 10 is such a nice, perfect number it doesn't mean you have to use it for all lists.
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Lilah Newbie Brazil sentaquelavemhistoriRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5541 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English
| Message 19 of 108 03 October 2009 at 7:57am | IP Logged |
The world can change a lot in just 5 years, so it's hard to accept any predictions. But I can't believe Portuguese is one of the 10. Hey! Why did I study English? =D
Anyway, I think Hindi could be replaced by Japanese. There are so many different languages in India and they already learn English. Japan is a strong country with a great economy. It started selling cars over the world and now they are already competing with Hollywood and selling their own media - this includes music, movies, series and cartoons. At least where I live kids would choose to watch animes instead of the american classic cartoons. Though this is just my opinion and we need to wait and see.
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7019 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 20 of 108 03 October 2009 at 9:26am | IP Logged |
Lingua wrote:
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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Good point, although I should mention that I'm just about to announce the successful outcome of my cold fusion experiments to the world which should alleviate global energy requirements.
P.S. Sennin, I thought the Klingons were our friends now. Why would they invade?
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Malapascua Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5546 days ago 3 posts - 8 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 21 of 108 04 October 2009 at 6:28pm | IP Logged |
Isarin wrote:
I believe Indonesian has everything it takes to be one of the top 10
in 2050. I totally agree with dagojr that it has to be on the list (if the list has to include 10 languages). It has got a broad base - about 200 mio speakers in several countries already, it is apparently pretty easy to learn and we are talking about countries where a lot will be going on in the next 41 years.
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The problem with Indonesia is the constant radicalization of the religion. That will lower the standard of education and destroy the economic growth.
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lloydkirk Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6417 days ago 429 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian
| Message 22 of 108 04 October 2009 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
I deleted my previous post here, but I am going to add something, cause it needs to be said. I'll just avoid knocking other language to keep the peace. Russian is enormously underrated on this forum. The future world economy is going to be dictated by those who have natural resources. Russia has that in abundance(natural gas, fresh water, minerals, farm land,etc). Additionally, it has a highly educated population and an intact industrial infrastructure. This gives it an advantage over most areas in the developing world. You can rant on and on about demographics trends all you want but those trends are a.) unpredictable and b.) largely irrelevant.
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dbruggeman Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5076 days ago 14 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 23 of 108 05 January 2011 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
I think everyone agrees that English is number one followed by Spanish and Chinese.
German, Russian, and Japanese are on the decline because of population decline in their
countries. Having lived in Europe I can tell you that German is on the decline outside
of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Hindi is not needed since business within India
is conducting in English.
Having visited Italy I found no reason to need to learn Italian since everyone spoke
English, the same is occurring all over Europe.
I see benefit in learning Portuguese and Indonesian since the countries are growing,
however, their populations are learning English as well.
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Fabrizio Pentaglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5186 days ago 103 posts - 157 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French, SpanishB2, Portuguese
| Message 24 of 108 05 January 2011 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
dbruggeman wrote:
Having visited Italy I found no reason to need to learn Italian since everyone spoke
English, the same is occurring all over Europe.
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With all the due respect to my country, my people and your opinion: believe me, "nobody"
speaks English in Italy eheheh :)
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