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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5962 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 9 of 115 01 January 2015 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I am prepared to offer 10 billion to 1 odds against that prediction proving correct in 2050. Any takers? Come on, put up a buck and you may be the beneficiary of a considerable windfall down the road. Please send a cheque for $1 (or more if you are prepared to bet in a larger amount) made payable to Spanky J. Bartholomew to the following address: 3474 Good Luck Finding Me Avenue Vancouver, BC CANADA V6J 2A4 Edited by Spanky on 01 January 2015 at 1:48am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Xenops Senior Member United States thexenops.deviantart Joined 3831 days ago 112 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 10 of 115 01 January 2015 at 5:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I think both the French and the Spanish predictions are biased, considering the sources of the predictions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4657 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 11 of 115 01 January 2015 at 11:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Talk about obvious :) I think the French had their minute of fame in the 17-18th century. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4915 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 12 of 115 01 January 2015 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're off by a century or two since the French still had a global empire in the 20th century. And for that matter, you could say the same thing about the English. The point is that the French "heyday" resulted in a lot of French speakers worldwide. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7211 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 13 of 115 01 January 2015 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And one can't discount supporting interest in the French language.
Having said that, English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian, and their dialects will likely all have more speakers than they have today. Edited by luke on 01 January 2015 at 8:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4296 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 14 of 115 02 January 2015 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I predict Spanish, and this is not because it is my favourite language and strongest
foreign language. I outline my reasoning hereunder. This is because Spanish is either 2nd or 3rd most spoken language on the planet, depending on which source, it could be either 2nd or 3rd. I believe that English currently occupies 1st place, because of the British Empire spreading its language and empire to basically every time zone, and American expansion (both in terms of politically and culturally in terms of media) after the Second World War. Mandarin remains around 2nd or 3rd depending on the sources. However, Mandarin is generally confined to one area, i.e. China, and I refer to the post-1949 People's Republic of China. Another smaller country that uses Mandarin is Taiwan. But Mandarin in the PRC is just an official language of the country. Definitely not everyone in PRC speaks Mandarin at home, but rather learn it for school, work, and business. There are hundreds of languages in the PRC, like Shanghainese, Fukien, Cantonese, etc. that are spoken at home and among communities outside of school and work. Singapore have it as one of their four national languages, but clearly use English as their main language for business and higher education, being a former British colony until 1965. Indonesia and Malayasia, both former European colonies until 1949 and 1948 respectively, have never had Mandarin as a major second language. Some learn it and that is true, but the Chinese population in both countries are overwhelmingly from Fukien Province (Xiamen [Amoy] especially), who do not speak Mandarin, but rather Fukien (Minnan). Malaysia use English undoubtedly as their trade language, and Indonesia use mostly Bahasa Indonesia with some English (though not much). I think that English has basically approached its global maximum (no pun intended, but I mean this in mathematical terms). The British Empire and the American economical gain after Second World War have heightened English into some sort of pseudo-lingua- franca with major cultural spread. But I think that Spanish can supercede this eventually. Spanish is obviously the language of Spain and the vast majority of Latinoamerica. But the very crucial point is that in Hispanophone countries, and I mean this as a general fact, not to insult, but the level of English is extremely poor. Spain have a very poor level of English compared to the other EU countries. Latin AMerica is much worse, where if I remember correctly, many Latin American countries' level of English were literally at the bottom of the list, with English having a low importance, and no wonder, because Spanish is a big language like English and Mandarin. Latin America functions almost entirely on Spanish as a business language, definitely not English. I know that anectodal counts are not scientific, but in addition to reports on English levels showing Latin America and Spain as very low, when I go to SPain or Latin America, everyone talks to me in Spanish, never English, and if someone tries to speak English outside of tourist areas (and even so I might say that it is fairly poor generally), the level is so poor that to me it could be even considered as nonexistent in some countries. Compare that to for example, Stockholm or Oslo. Spanish holds its place with the speakers' refusal to adopt English as a lingua franca, a business language, or anything similar, using Spanish instead, and the amount of Hispanophones is extremely large already, so this would just increase as time passes. Spanish is a very popular foreign language, and the RAE encourage people to learn it, just like Anglophones want people to learn English. There is another important thing to note: Latin America are dropping many of their former ties with the USA in exchange for ties with Russia and China. China, in particular, provide many economic negotiations that were previously with the USA, because Latin American countries view China as a more equitable trading partner than the USA. Correa (Ecuador), Bachelet (Chile), CFK (Argentina), Raúl Castro (Cuba), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), José Mujica (Uruguay), are amongst some of the many LAtin American leaders who have openly changed their preference for their countries to trade from the USA to China as a main partner, and this interchange could easily increase Spanish as a major language for those in the PRC to learn. For example, Nicaragua have agreed a negotiation with China that PRC fund the Nicaragua Canal, a new canal wherethrough ships sail from the Atlantic to PAcific or vice versa, to stop the monopoly of the Panama Canal, mostly funded by the USA. Argentina have opened many economic deals with China, especially given the massive polemic issues that Argentina have with the USA with los fondos buitres (if you are from Argentina or follow Argentinian happenings, you know exactly what I mean). I predict that this new Latin America-China relationship shall eventually seal Spanish as the lingua franca when China start teaching Spanish as a second business language, and Latin America gains in economic power (which is already very fast). I believe that it could be forgiven that Spanish is not factored as a candidate as much, because I think that it requires following Hispanophone countries in terms of their happenings and development, which requires reasonable knowledge of Spanish (because they do not talk about these things in English often, another point). I have followed this relationship with Latin America and China very closely, and major Latin America-China financial negotiations like these probably would escape most Anglophones, especially Anglophone predictions who seem to retain English as the lingua franca forever. Winston Churchill said in the mid 1940s, "May the British Empire last 1000 years", and now probably less than 10% of the land under the empire is still colonies, I think that English as a lingua franca might surprisingly be superceded by Spanish similarly. Spanish is already a major business and trade language, the question is just when it reaches the height that English has, I give it less than 20 years. I finish with a quote from Uruguayan PResident José "Pepe" Mujica to US President Barack Obama during his state visit to Washington last year: «En EEUU van a tener que comenzar a hablar español». Edited by 1e4e6 on 03 January 2015 at 1:50am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4755 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 15 of 115 03 January 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Swedish :)
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 115 03 January 2015 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Mongolian. Book it.
What Chinggis Khan and his heirs couldn't quite accomplish 800 years ago, some other Mongol will do it. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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