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2031: More and Less Influential Languages | ||
Tags: Lingua franca | Language Politics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 9 of 25 19 April 2011 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually it wasn't my own opinion, I was deriving that comment from your post;
As for Chinese and Arabic, no real reasons were given. Care to elaborate? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 10 of 25 19 April 2011 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't think Hugo Chavez is doing anything for Spanish, except bring more Venezuelans to
the USA who's children will end up speaking English anyway. Edited by ChiaBrain on 19 April 2011 at 4:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5062 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 11 of 25 19 April 2011 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In my view, English, Spanish and portuguese will keep their niches in the american continent.
Yes, I see Brazil as a powerful emergent economy, in spite of its social issues yet to solve, and chances are it will very soon surpass Italy, France and UK regarding to GDP (according to IMF, it already surpassed Italy). But does it mean portuguese will become a dominant language? I don't see how. We are surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries, and they don't need to learn portuguese to communicate with us. Not even in Buenos Aires they care about learning portuguese, which is arguably the most cosmopolitan city in all South America and is the most common touristic destination of brazilians. And we already love to spend our money there anyway. If I could choose what language should be more influential in 2031, I would certainly choose hindi/urdu, and possibly bengali as well, and perhaps one more indian language, like tamil or telugu. It's a enormous pity that a country like India is so conditioned to believe they need to rely on English as a lingua franca. They are a superpower on population, religion, history, music (I'm referring to traditional/classical indian music), cuisine, and almost everything else that classify as culture, except language. The fact that indians have no consent on adopting one of their languages as their national one, replacing English in most spaces, doesn't make any sense. I'm a fond of hindi and I believe its role on creating a trully indian identity (of course, without supressing the richness of bengali, marathi, punjabi, telugu, tamil, etc.). Why they insist on English or hinglish instead? So, I don't know if it is a realistic wish, but I wish more influence to hindi. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hungh3 Newbie Vietnam https://tienganhmoin Joined 5800 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: EnglishC2 | Message 12 of 25 19 April 2011 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree that economic factors play a crucial role.
Other factors I think worth considering are: 1. The language itself: the fact that English is relatively easy to learn lower the barrier a lot to beginners. They might have changed their minds otherwise, such as for Chinese. 2. The growing number of intellects and hence, very likely, the number of intellectual works written in that language. Of course, entertainment news info, etc. also matter. And I doubt that the reason for a dominating language, such as English, to keep dominating is because it satisfies so many requirements. In today context, if some serious readers want to access the latest materials in almost any field, English is the only language that can help. And when a person has become so familiar with that dominating language, things perpetuate. Nevertheless, the economic factors and national pride may also be the deciding elements. And I think Chinese is going to keep expanding because of its huge population, migration and increasing economic might. This is despite the fact that Chinese takes such a huge amount of time to learn to write (and read). Edited by hungh3 on 20 April 2011 at 4:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 13 of 25 19 April 2011 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think many non-Hindi speakers in India would rather work on their English as a means
to get into a high-tech job. Even if they don't deal with English speaking customers directly I imagine learning materials for computer subjects are easier to come by in English than in Hindi. I think this is particularly true in the south where they speak Dravidian languages. And using Hindi as the official language has been a hot issue in India long before the computer age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil_ Nadu That said I think its likely that the growing Hindi speaking middle class will increase its importance. Edited by ChiaBrain on 19 April 2011 at 5:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6660 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 14 of 25 19 April 2011 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Don't forget that 2031 is only twenty years away. I don't see any huge changes in that time. The languages that are influential today were influential in 1991 and will probably remain influential in 2031.
English is almost certainly the most influential language in the world and Mandarin Chinese would be a close second. I don't see any major change there for quite some time. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 16 of 25 19 April 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I get the impression that Portuguese will be like German: spoken in a few important countries with some bounce beyond its borders.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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