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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 57 of 115 14 January 2015 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think a lot depends on how many generations it takes Hispanophone families to lose their Spanish once they come to the US. If the language gets lost more quickly -- as might be the case, since I think if anything Hispanophones are tending toward quicker and more complete integration than in the past -- then Spanish may eventually be less of a force in the US. According to this article the second generation born here (grandchildren of immigrants) more or less does not speak it. That's a pretty steep cliff. There were once big groups of immigrants and their kids speaking Italian and German as well, but now there are probably more people here who learned those in school than native speakers whose parents were born in the US. Edited by tastyonions on 14 January 2015 at 12:51pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 58 of 115 14 January 2015 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Again I think we tend to confuse the role of a language as a lingua franca and its role as a an
instrument of political or cultural cohesion. The dominant lingua franca English, whatever its difficulty or ease of learning, has a momentum in a globalized world that shows no signs of slowing down. We just have to look at the most popular foreign language taught in schools outside the English-speaking countries. I don't have the exact figures but I'm sure it is English. In the English-speaking world, it's probably French, Spanish and Mandarin. The spread of English the lingua franca is certainly not preventing other languages from spreading regionally. I would think that Spanish is spreading in Brazil and the Caribbean. Brazilian Portuguese in parts of Latin America. French in Africa and a bit in Canada. Mandarin in China and in the diaspora. Etc. I also think that one of the ways of penetration of English in many countries around the world is through the large student, immigrant or diaspora communities present in North America and various English-speaking countries. These are all conduits for the knowledge of English back to the countries of origin. I'm thinking particularly of the large number of Asian students in North American schools. On another note, one could imagine that English spoken globally may take on a life of its own and differentiate from the major national varieties of English. Certainly, we've seen the rise of American English as the dominant form of English taught abroad. This is a whole other topic, but I think we may even see the rise of Globish as a distinct form of English for international communication. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 59 of 115 15 January 2015 at 3:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wish not to use too much personal experience, but I just spoke with a cousin, who is
sending both of her sons to Mandarin immersion, and one of them is due to continue Mandarin immersion and start a co-current Spanish immersion in a college, thus both of her sons would have approximately 13 years of Mandarin when they finish college and right before they go to university, and the other one 13 years with 4 years of Spanish immersion at his new college. She kept telling me that this was because there is a large feeling that is floating in immersion primary schools and colleges that Mandarin and Spanish are the languages of the future, due to supplant English in a few decades. I have a feeling that Spanish and Mandarin are leading very low-key profiles and many, especially in the Anglophone or at least, Western world, gravely overestimate the importance and dominance of English that it could somehow continue until the next Ice Age. Spanish and Mandarin are increasing popular in the countries where I live, both the UK and USA, and they are sending their children here not just for the hell of it, but rather because they think that business shall be conducted in a few decades quite breathly, in both Spanish and Mandarin. My cousin has probably spent thousands of $/€/ £ on these immersion programmes for her children, so it cannot be just some premonition. I also have a feeling that "Hello, have a nice day" shall quite soon be replaced in many regions by «Hola, ¿cómo está?» and «Ni2(3)† hao3». It should be noted that immersion programmes have quite a lot of people from completely varying backgrounds, many of whom have no familian nor formal experience, connection, nor education in the target languages wherein they send their children, but rather just for the common cause of having their children be highly skilled in their target language from a young age to be prepared to live with Mandarin or Spanish as the new world language(s). In other words, it is more about just doing it regardless of the "fun factor", it is doing what non-native Anglophones do to learn English right now to have better employment prospects, just in reverse. She also told me, "You want a good job in the future? Learn Spanish or Chinese". I replied, «Eso ya lo hago». †: I know that it is ni3, but it takes ni2 before a third toned word. I still remember some Mandarin.. Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 January 2015 at 3:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4031 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 60 of 115 15 January 2015 at 3:22am | IP Logged | |||||
The sooner the better, English needs time to get back further on its feet without interference from non-natives, for a good success story of re-complexification after simplification, look at Japanese, I believe it was a true creole/pidgin in the deep past like Old Chinese, but it certainly recovered, not just a "trimmed" language like English, Spanish, or Mandarin, but we have languages which never got more complex than the very basic stages (Amazon Rainforest, many Austronesian, Turkic/some Uralic outside Europe) so what an even bigger limbo it could possibly enter into! Oh yeah, where was I? So Japanese had one vital catalyst, the native speakers isolated their language from foreigners to a certain degree. There are dozens of examples of this happening.English needs to be left to native speakers, the sooner we standardize a global variety, the better just so they can get their foots off our necks. Edited by Stolan on 15 January 2015 at 5:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 61 of 115 15 January 2015 at 3:34am | IP Logged | |||||
http://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/councilarticles/pdr/P DR323Rumbaut.pdf I can't see the United States doing anything other than remaining the largely English-speaking linguistic "graveyard" it has been for the last century. Of course, that is entirely compatible with Spanish gaining in importance relative to English on the world stage, which seems likely. Edited by tastyonions on 15 January 2015 at 3:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4031 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 62 of 115 15 January 2015 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Wait, I just noticed this. Well well well, Asian countries? I will leave context and inference to you to know what I would say, the paragraphs of stuff I would write, the way a speaker of an east Asian language has to do so for almost every sentence considering their regions typology. Or that they are objectively difficult and not relatively to lets say an alien, (outside of one group using a difficult writing system.), an Alien would say unbiasedly that Mandarin, English, and Spanish are some of the more straightforward languages, Mandarin being heavily simplified compared to other dialects. (It is not considered a difficult language speakers of other dialects, quite the opposite!) I will sum up this again though, for every 1 western language speaker, there are 2 Asian isolating language type speakers, they outnumber US. But they are considered a fraction or minority despite the opposite being closer to the truth, we are the exceptions, European languages,....It's not all vortigese or klingon there, in fact, I would say many westerners are speaking vortigese and klingon and they HUMAN languages. Edited by Stolan on 15 January 2015 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 63 of 115 15 January 2015 at 8:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Nice quote! And I generally agree. Playing the devil's advocate, though, couldn't one see Spanish reaching a "critical mass" where it starts to live its own life? Especially if non-speakers start to see it as an important language and start learning it. Wouldn't the life expectancy be correlated to community size? And again, if businesses start catering to Spanish speakers, the pressure to assimilate decreases, too. But for this path to be truly sucessful, I guess we'd need to see businesses using Spanish in the office, and that doesn't seem too likely. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 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 64 of 115 15 January 2015 at 8:45am | IP Logged | |||||
In the USA, we've seen large populations of Polish, Italian, German, and Yiddish speakers all decline as the descendants of immigrants have gradually switched to English. This may have been accelerated by some factors such as that European immigrants' assimilation was enhanced because they looked like white Anglophone Americans, and also that those populations were either smaller or less geographically concentrated. If USA Spanish is to avoid the same fate, it will need to be helped by many more decades of high Spanish speaking immigration to build up that critical mass. Hispanophones must gain higher socioeconomic status to avoid negative associations with the language that prevent it from being used in white-collar workplaces or passed on to children as a primary language. Despite that rise in status, those Hispanophones must remain relatively geographically separate from other Americans; if they spread out to all parts of the country with jobs, there won't be a critical mass anywhere. There has to be a conscious effort by the Hispanic community to maintain the language and promote its use. Anglophone Americans, especially those living in the Southwest, must become more favorable to learning Spanish. If all that happens--I don't think it will--I can imagine a Spanish-speaking region arising where there will be Spanish-language public schools, Spanish-language universities, Spanish-language offices, and Spanish- language town/city council meetings. There are already towns and at least one major city (El Paso, Texas) where most of the population is Spanish-dominant. Anglophones will still be able to live in those regions and expect English to be understood, not unlike Anglophones in Montréal, which has separate schools and universities that teach in French and English. If this happens, it will be centered on West Texas, but could potentially extend to New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California, and there may be another island of it in South Florida. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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