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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 81 of 115 20 January 2015 at 11:04am | IP Logged | |||||
People also send their children to Jewish schools to learn Hebrew, or to a prestigious lycée français. There are more now that there's some money to be made, but in general English will always win out and the numbers of Chinese learning English outnumber the Anglophones learning Chinese by a factor of ten probably. China is a bigger country, but it has no spread because it's geopolitically much more isolated. People in Russia, France and Spain want to learn English. In Nicaragua. In Tadjikistan or in Gambia. I'm sorry, buddy, but as they say in English: "Not gonna happen". 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 82 of 115 21 January 2015 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
English is being forced onto the rest of the world against the common native speakers' will. Since the west has historically dominated the entirety of the world by guns, germs, and steel, it would come as no surprise than any non-European language would never be tolerated at all. English just won't get time to breath. It should be no one's native language if it's going to fade and crumble into globish. Edited by Stolan on 21 January 2015 at 3:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 83 of 115 21 January 2015 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe it is just me but your thoughts on the spread of English come across as more than a bit bigoted.
"Oh deary me, all those terrible foreigners are adopting my precious language and polluting it with their solecisms and approximative lexical choices! How dare they!" People will learn whatever advances their business and travel interests. No, most of them will neither write it like Hemingway nor speak it like Churchill. English will survive just fine even if the speech of some of its adopters gives you a case of the vapors. Edited by tastyonions on 21 January 2015 at 12:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 84 of 115 21 January 2015 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
It happened to Latin and to Ancient Greek? Languages change under the influence of foreign cultures. This is how life works. Maybe a hundred years ago people were forced to speak English, but nowadays, people are learning English of their own accord and you cannot blame people for wanting to learn English. They may not be perfect, but neither are you when you speak Thai. So there's no need to be elitist about English. For the record, this forum is full of non-native English speakers who have all learned English to a high level who could all be terribly insulted by this statement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 85 of 115 21 January 2015 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't see the spread of English threatening any other languages. Last time I was in Amsterdam, they locals all spoke Dutch among themselves, and that's a country where people generally have an excellent knowledge of English. Go to any city outside the tourist circuit in Germany, France, Italy or Spain and you really won't encounter much English at all. Sure, most people under 50 will be able to speak at least some English, but it's hardly displacing the native tongue (I don't count "cool" advertising slogans).
An emergence of a lingua franca can actually promote language learning in my opinion. I know lots of people who have moved to another country and used English to find their feet initially but have gone on to become proficient in the local language. It doesn't always have to be a case of big, bad bully-boy English. Edited by beano on 21 January 2015 at 1:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 86 of 115 21 January 2015 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm going to stay out of part of the discussion here because - and it's rare that I say this - I just can't
understand some of the turgid prose. Back to the main thread. When we talk about the numbers of speakers of a language, it's important to distinguish between the numbers of native speakers of a language and the numbers of non-native speakers. There's hardly any controversy about the most spoken native languages. It's all based on population. The ranking won't change much by 2050. Where there is some controversy is the future role the various languages as vehicles of international communication. There is no doubt that people are attracted to certain languages for a variety of reasons that apply in some way to all of us here and HTLAL. And certain languages have certainly been imposed through colonial and political domination. What will happen in 500 years is anybody's guess, but for the year 2050 and probably even 2150, English or a form thereof, will be the language of choice for global communication. The reason I think we can say this is not based on any kind of innate superiority of English or, in my opinion, world hegemony of the English-speaking countries. For a variety of reasons that merit discussion, English has developed a momentum that I think is unstoppable. This, of course, does not prevent other languages from attracting learners who perceive some personal benefit. One way of measuring the international reach of a language is to look at the numbers of non-native speakers or learners. English is by far the most widely studied language. This we know, but it would be interesting to see how much English, compared to other languages, is actually spoken by non-natives. Imagine that we could survey all the countries of the world and measure the levels of proficiency in foreign languages. Using the CEFR scale, we could ask: what percentage of the population has at least an A1 level of proficiency in certain foreign languages? To get a better sense of the future, we could ask: what percentage of the population under the age of 30 has at least an A1 proficiency in the popular languages? I don't have any figures myself but I think we an safely assume that English is way ahead of all the languages and probably more than all the other languages combined. The same sort of enquiry could be done in terms of technical or scientific communication. What is the most widespread non-native language used by scientists or in any area of international technical communication? For example, are there in the world today any commercial airplane pilots who do not have at least an A1 command of English? I would think not even one. That's the nature of the phenomenon. English has become a de facto standard of international communication, and nothing on the horizon seems about to change this. Edit: I changed year 3050 to 2150. I wasn't really thinking of 1035 years from now. Edited by s_allard on 22 January 2015 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 87 of 115 21 January 2015 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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edit:ignore post Edited by Stolan on 21 January 2015 at 7:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 88 of 115 21 January 2015 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All right. Edited by tarvos on 22 January 2015 at 4:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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