Language predictions for the future
Thursday, 30th April 2009
Which languages are likely to be most widely spoken and useful to know in the future? At the moment the languages with the most speakers are Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian and French.
This list takes into account both native and second language speakers. If you look at how many countries each language is spoken in, the list changes to: English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Russian. If you also consider economic strength of the countries where they’re spoken, the number of fields they’re used in internationally, and their prestige, the top five languages are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic, with Chinese in 6th place.
The languages most widely studied in English-speaking countries are currently French, German, Spanish, Italian, and increasingly Mandarin and Japanese. In Australia languages like Indonesian and Vietnamese are also quite popular.
The numbers of people learning Mandarin has increased dramatically over the past decade or so, and is likely to continue increasing in the future. This is partly a result of the Chinese government’s efforts to promote the language by setting up Confucious Institutes all over the world, and also due to China’s current economic strength. If the Chinese economy continues to grow while the economies of most other countries are in recession, a knowledge of Mandarin is likely to be increasingly useful.
The number of people speaking and learning Spanish and Arabic is also increasing and will probably continue to do so, although it’s very difficult to say whether either or both of these languages, or indeed Mandarin or another language could challenge the current dominance of English.
On the other hand, it’s possible that the dominance of English will continue and the number of speakers and learners will keep on going up. At the same time new local varieties of English which mix elements from English with other languages are emerging and will emerge. For example, in Singapore many people speak Singlish, which has vocabulary mainly from English, and also from Malay, Hokkien and Mandarin, and grammar similar to Chinese. Such varieties of English can be unintelligible to native English speakers from elsewhere, so maybe it be worthwhile becoming familiar with some of them.
Within Europe many non-native speakers of English use English as a lingua franca, but the type of English they use is not the same as native varieties. It tends to use simplified grammar and a smaller vocabulary, and avoids idioms and other culturally-specific references. Native English speakers who don’t speak other languages but are familiar with this type of English will find it easier to communicate with their European neighbours.
Tags: english, spanish, french, german, italian, languages, language
Posted by Laura Harrison under Attitudes to Language Learning,
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