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Global linguistic situation in 30 years | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6538 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 26 of 30 16 March 2010 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although technology and economics play a huge role, freedom of speech will ultimately determine whether or not Mandarin becomes a dominant language.
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| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5677 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 27 of 30 16 March 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
I find this very interesting. I know you've stamped a heavy caveat onto your statement, but I wonder what you see beyond 2040. Do you see a day, in the distant future, in which representative language becomes obsolete and emotive language takes over? For example, instead of using words or speaking, we will simply express emotions which will be rendered comprehensible by some form of technology. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6042 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 28 of 30 17 March 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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People stop learning English. Other languages like Mandarin and Arabic become popular the world over. After a couple of years most people give up. Too many Chinese characters to memorise. Too many Arabic dialects to learn. Everyone starts learning English again.
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| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 29 of 30 17 March 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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By 2050 Serbs will finally put their plan of world domination into action and conquer Milwaukee and after that Tokyo thus making Serbian the official global language (based on the saying "Srbija do Tokija preko Milvokija").
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| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 30 of 30 17 March 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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English continues on its course, being used as the lingua franca between OPEC, China, and India. The Western economy begins to dwindle, and those of European descent are left with the bitter irony of watching one of their own languages being used to economically exclude them.
Okay okay. More realistic answer. English continues on its ascendant course as the entire internet generation learns at least a smattering. English itself becomes highly variable and absorbs a plethora of loan words from across the globe. Eventually it begins to morph into quite another thing altogether, retaining its basic grammar while vocabulary explodes in size (as if English needed any more vocabulary). If anything, it develops somewhat like Arabic, with a orthographically correct and somewhat simplified International Standard English being used in the worldwide press, medicine, transportation, engineering, and many other technical fields. Several Englishes develop in various parts of the world as the children of the internet generation inherit their parents' smattering of English and meld it into their own. We end up with a strange sort of global trilingualism: International Standard English as a globalized language, regional 'English Creoles' developing as colloquial lingua francas between neighboring countries, and then native languages being used within communities and to maintain ethnic and cultural identities. At this point, native English speakers emigrate en masse to learn Navajo so that they might actually be able to have private conversations again. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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