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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5062 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 89 of 115 22 January 2015 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
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@s_allard:
Thank you for bringing the discussion back. As you say, the major national languages will retain their native speakers for the foreseeable future. The crux of the discussion, however, is about which languages will have lots of nonnative speakers. If you survey the world asking who has competence in which second languages, what you are doing is discovering which languages have global reach right now. By itself, this says little about the stability of the status of each language, or how much it will be learned in 2150 or 3050, when all the people you surveyed will be dead. I myself am undecided on whether the momentum of English has put it in such a stable position that it (or some form of it) will be the language of international communication in 3050. But if you argue that that is likely to be the case, as opposed to unlikely or "too hard to say," you should have to justify how the likely scenarios will not cause English to be replaced, as other international languages have repeatedly been replaced in the past. Ideally, one would look at microcosms where a language had a certain degree of dominance locally, and what forces did and didn't lead to replacement by another language. Are the conditions that led to replacement unlikely to recur in the future? Or are they the kind of thing that will happen as a result of the Anglosphere losing its economic dominance eventually? And with how much confidence can we interpret unprecedented future technologies and global conditions as being conducive or not to maintaining the dominance of English? I think it would be useful to consider the degree of investment in English by both individuals and institutions. At the individual level, I think A1 competence is the wrong line to draw. A1 competence is quickly achieved by anyone who has a practical reason to communicate in a language. It's not a very high degree of investment. A1 speakers will gladly switch to another language, as they won't lose much if their limited command of English stops being used. B2-C2 speakers, on the other hand, would probably be reasonably invested in maintaining English dominance, so their hard-earned competence keeps its value. Institutional investment is potentially more important than individual investment. Which institutions could change language without suffering a large cost? Do institutions rely on a large set of accumulated documents that would need to be translated? Do members of those institutions need high competence to function, requiring excessive retraining in the case of a switch? In the case of air traffic control, the answer would seem to be no. Just as airline workers around the world learned some basic workplace English, they could switch, since they need only a limited part of the language, and don't have a lot of accumulated documents. The Internet is another case where I believe inertia is smaller than it seems. Most documents on the Internet are fairly new. If people started writing in a different language, I don't think too much would be lost in the backlog of English content, which most people would be able to understand during the transition generations anyway. I think it would be a little harder for institutions like the scientific community to switch. Scientific discussion demands a decently high level, and old, untranslated documents are important. So I don't think international science would change its dominant language until well after the Internet or air traffic. 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 90 of 115 22 January 2015 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I think that robarb's points are well taken. By the way, I meant the year 2150 and not 3050! What I
think is quite interesting in the case of English today is that it has become or is becoming a true lingua franca and not so much a language of political domination. In any area where international or global communication is important the choice is between translation and some common vehicle. This common vehicle is now English. I agree that the threshold I suggested at A1 is not very high but the point was to try to estimate how many people in the world today have some measurable proficiency in another language. The point here is that much of the world's population today, especially the less than 30-year olds have some knowledge of English compared to Mandarin or even the popular languages like French and Spanish. I would think that the level of proficiency in English is inching up wit all the international travel that is available today. As for other languages substituting for English in the future, I think that it is certainly possible. But rather than thinking in terms of current languages replacing English, we could think of some future syncretistic language becoming the new lingua franca. If we look at the current candidates, there is no way in hell that Mandarin could become a lingua franca with that writing system. As for French and Spanish, they are certainly candidates, but what would it take for them to replace English which offers a number of major advantages? The future will probably be initially some form of globalized simplified English or Globish. Now if English or Globish were combined with something like Mandarin, that may be a winning combination. Edited by s_allard on 22 January 2015 at 2:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4752 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 91 of 115 23 January 2015 at 6:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin is too alien to outsiders to be able to become a lingua franca.
Shanghainese would be much less alien, easier to pronounce, easier grammar etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 92 of 115 23 January 2015 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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How much easier? Assuming we're talking about the same thing, it's still a Chinese language, and that alone makes it alien enough for (at least) the Eurocentric hemisphere.
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 93 of 115 25 January 2015 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry for dragging the conversation away from the main topic. I can discuss those things elsewhere.
No no no Mandarin is a simplified variety of Chinese, well, not so much simplified but "held back" at an earlier stage closer to (but still far away from) Old Chinese, when it was still a creole/pidgin in recovery like Old Japanese. Essentially, Shanghainese hasn't had as long a hiatus of "getting back on it's feet" brought upon by Altaic invasions. Shanghainese has tonal sandhi as complex as Finnish consonant gradation, far more measure words, more modal particles, freer pragmatic word order etc. etc. That's not to say if somehow in the year 3000 the City of Shanghai gains control of the Chinese empire so that we have to speak it, but it is not less alien at all. 1 person has 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 94 of 115 26 January 2015 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Presumably English and French were once just as "alien" to Asian ears as what Mandarin is perceived to be
by current European standards. If China begins to dominate world affairs then of course they will want to do so in their own language. I don't see this happening by 2050 but today's linguistic make-up of the world might not have much of an influence by the time 3050 rolls around. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4671 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 95 of 115 26 January 2015 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Hopefully, Mandarin will never be a global lingua franca, because it will be easier for all Indians to learn English (the 2nd official language of India) than for non-Chinese to learn Mandarin.
Thank God we have India, to counter Chinese expansionist tendencies. Edited by Medulin on 26 January 2015 at 5:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4293 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 96 of 115 26 January 2015 at 5:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I do not think that one can possibly complain about expanionism nor imperialism (of
PRC???), whilst simultaneously trying to maintain English, probably the language of two of the most imperialistic countries that this Earth's entire existence has ever known, with one having the largest empire in World history, bigger than the Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, Alexander the Great's Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Napoleon's Empire combined. Just no. Seems to me like a case of "This world language is an excellent idea, as long as that language is English and that we can prevent every other language from even coming close to a fraction of that importance." I wish to return to the very important topic of the resistance to English. This I notice is strongest in Hispanophone countries. Perhaps not the best example, just one: I am watching, at this very moment, the Miss Universe contest. There are very few countries whose contestants cannot speak English. So far in their interviews, all of them are from Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Venezuela, and Spain. The contestants of these three countries needed an interpreter to voiceover-dub their Spanish interview answers and broadcast the English to the television. Note that Argentina are the highest ranking for the entire Hispanophone world on the English proficiency listings. That might say something about the importance and acceptance of English in the Hispanophone world. I have a feeling that people in Spanish speaking countries have realised that English is just another language, and better to stick to their own language, counter English with Spanish, and Spanish can rise to the world's language someday. I noticed this from my friendships with Spanish speakers. Their English skills tend to be absolutely horrible, and they just give no damns about learning English, because there is no need nor pressure to do so. Most of my Argentinian, Spanish, and Venezuelan friends really do not give a damn about learning English, I thought that it might be just them, but I sense this throughout many Hispanophone countries. Addition: I am now watching Dutch programme "3 Op Reis", and at 18:50 in this episode on Chile, host goes to Santiago and follows a Spanish intensive class. «Sólo en español» says the profesora. «¡¿Sólo español?!» asks the host, and follows up, «¿No habla inglés?», «¡No!,» responds the profesora. He says to the camera, «Okee, leuke lerares, we gaan in geen Engels praten...», and this host has serious problems communicating in Spanish. I am not sure if this is just for the class, but if even Spanish teachers refuse English for low level Spanish students in Chile (I mean really low level, as in complete beginner A0), this gives me some impression that there is some linguistic unity amongst the Hispanophone world. Edited by 1e4e6 on 26 January 2015 at 7:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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