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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 41 of 115 11 January 2015 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
I am referring to only a few like Brazil and Russia. I don't mean to be prejudiced by I've gotten a good sense of where the worst offenders are likely from. Most countries with heavy amounts of 2l English speakers (except for the Netherlands) tend to be much more accepting of English as an equal to their own language. Elsewhere in the western sphere, a lot don't see English as an equal as a language, the second someone says "I have more trouble with my native language than with English lol" that person is posting crap. 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 42 of 115 11 January 2015 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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What the... hell are you on about?
I don't even see what you're trying to imply. 5 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 43 of 115 12 January 2015 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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2050 is only 35 years, or approximately half a lifetime away. Young people everywhere are learning English and I expect that trend to continue over the next few decades and English will certainly rule the roost at the midpoint of the century. That doesn't mean that everybody, everywhere will speak it confidently, but it will be the dominant tongue. Trying to reverse the momentum it has already gained will be like turning round a heavy oil tanker.
Taking a longer view, I don't believe for a minute that English will always be the world's lingua franca just because it happens to occupy that spot at present. Among the general public, it does always amuse me the way many people throw up their hands in horror at the suggestion that, say, Mandarin may become the global language of the future. It's almost a case of yes, a lingua franca is a great thing, as long as it happens to be one I already speak. Edited by beano on 12 January 2015 at 1:31pm 5 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 44 of 115 13 January 2015 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
Edit: Vortigese is an alien language from the Half Life series. Edited by Stolan on 14 January 2015 at 12:23am 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 45 of 115 13 January 2015 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
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What is Vortigese? And why is there a strong whiff of bigotry in your posts?
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 46 of 115 13 January 2015 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's quite a spectacle to see a crazy discussion on which I have given up all hope long ago. Actually, I'm
fascinated how someone can write grammatical yet unintelligible English. Back to the thread. I want to emphasize again the distinction between English as a lingua franca and English as a dominant language. although I admit using, somewhat mistakenly, the term "world domination" when referring to English. They are not the same thing. As I have pointed out, the spread of English today is not linked to the oppression or disappearance of other languages, except perhaps for the indigenous languages in English-speaking countries. English has become for the world a trade language, to be used when speaking to "others". An interesting side effect of this is that learning English is not incompatible with the rise and consolidation of truly dominant languages within geographic confines. I would even argue that linguistic nationalism internally can be compatible with the widespread use of English as the lingua franca externally. More specifically, what this means is that while being a native speaker of English is a probably a net advantage in today's world, this does not preclude the necessity of learning other languages. In fact, what I believe is happening is that the widespread use of English is actually a subtle way of excluding monolingual English-speakers from areas of competition where another language will be demanded or imposed. I think this is a cruel reality that hits many English-speakers who believe that there is no point in learning a foreign language since the whole world speaks English. This is a trap. Woe to the English- speaking monoglot. The real future is in bilingualism. In my opinion, this is particularly clear in the massive embrace of English by the Asian countries where the national languages are reputedly difficult to learn. This effectively excludes forms of foreign competition while allowing nationals to compete abroad. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 47 of 115 13 January 2015 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a really interesting point, s_allard. And while it's very true that the "dominance" of English does nothing to outcompete national languages, I do think it has adverse effects on them at least inasmuch that things like academic literature will be written less in national languages. Also, as an effect not of English as a trade language but as a culturally dominant language, it lowers the esteem of the national language. Two hundred years ago, Esaias Tegnér coined the term "The language of honor and heroes" (Ärans och hjältarnas språk) for the Swedish language*. Today, things in Swedish sound "silly" while things in English sound "cool". Swedes have difficulty taking Swedish action movies seriously, because the dialog sounds so weak compared to that of American acion movies.
* Every language enthusiast who knows Swedish needs to read that poem about the European languages. http://runeberg.org/tegner/057.html Edited by Ari on 13 January 2015 at 1:20pm 2 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 48 of 115 14 January 2015 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
I agree that it is a trap to not learn other languages, I sometimes actually feel glad in a weird way so many signs are in Spanish in the USA, it may force native English speakers to learn Spanish just to communicate with immigrants from over the border, it will force them out of a comfort zone. Spanish is probably going to be the second most important western language in the world. But I would like to confirm, even though we already talked about this about the difficult aspects, a language like Mandarin without the horrific writing system or Spanish could have easily been there instead of English, a language like Russian would never ever of course nor would Arabic, but the two former could have were things different. Spanish is learnable, even with the conjugations and gender, it is not grueling enough that it could never be accepted instead of English in an alternative universe. The gender is tough, ok, but a language with inflection is not necessarily harder for having fewer spaces between words. Hungarian's 35 cases are easily smashed by Icelandics 4 cases. I just need you to see that, English is simplified due to lacking the Germanic flavor, its lack of inflection means much less than you think. And Mandarin seems much easier to a Thai friend of mine (except for the evil writing system), we can't just think of how hard it may be for westerners. Remember there are 2 East/Southeast Asians for every 1 European language speaker in this world and that doesn't count overseas communities. There are MORE of them than us yet they are left out in the consideration of language too often. Mandarin without the writing system even with the tones would be phonologically and grammatically easy for speakers of Asian tonal languages to get right. Back to English: English may not have been the same were it left alone in the USA and the commonwealth only from 1700 onward, it would have retained more of the Germanic flavor it no longer has (tons of prefixes, V2., to be perfect, whence and whither, reflexive verbs, etc "y'all" may have been standardized.), and would have had time to (re)gain complexities like the Scandinavian languages which also lost inflection but had time to gain back a ton of non-inflectional features and maintain the Germanic flavor. Have you considered the fact that English is the easiest Germanic language may not be why it is so widely spoken or spread so quickly, rather it is so widely spoken (without any academy to prevent things from falling through the cracks) to the point that it lost features from spreading all over? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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