According to the Engco Forecasting Model explained above, the 5 most spoken languages in 2050 will be Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. The key drivers behind the continued rise in popularity of these languages include population growth, economic predictions and national language policy.
Indo-Aryan Languages
Both Hindi and Urdu from the Indo-Aryan language are potential languages of the future. Hindi is the native language of 535 million people in India. Like China, this population continues to grow every year. Urdu is widely spoken by 170 million people around the world.
Of course, the world is constantly changing, and a new study has proclaimed that there will soon be a new global language on the world scene. Dr. Jeffrey Gill, a Flinders University academic, believes Chinese is set to rise shortly as a prominent global language spoken frequently outside of China and Asia.
English will most likely not become the dominant world language as more people speak more than one language, a language expert reports. The world faces a future of people speaking more than one language, with English no longer seen as likely to become dominant, a British language expert says in a new analysis.
It's unlikely that we'll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each individual countries' cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as beautifully diverse as it's always been.
The number of Chinese speakers online is estimated at 888.4 million, which has risen an astounding 2600% over the same time period. The Chinese language is catching up quickly and is set to overtake English in the near future.
As David Graddol notes in “The Future of English?”, there is no reason to believe that another language will become the global lingua franca within the next 50 years. English probably won't replace other languages, but its usefulness as the common language in trade, diplomacy, and pop culture will continue.
English is also seen as the language of the Internet and high tech and that definitely has a negative impact on other languages. Some people claim that the world's linguistic diversity is less preserved because of English domination and that more local languages are declining each year.
Boost your career prospects with English
Proficient language can change your entire future by opening new career opportunities. It can benefit you if you are working in a multinational organization. Knowing more languages, you possess an advantage over other candidates who speak only one language.
Speaking a common language enables you to meet new people who also speak that language, and can result in lifelong friendships that you otherwise wouldn't be able to make. As well as building relationships with people who speak English, it also gives the opportunity to learn more about other cultures.
Language extinction
Many of the languages spoken today are in constant extinction. Linguistic predictions say that of 6,000 languages that are globally spoken today, around 600 of them after 100 years will have simplified versions or will not exist at all.
A language becomes dormant or extinct when no one can speak it anymore. It becomes doomed when the latest generation of children no longer speak the language. From that point, the last fluent speakers of the language, in their late teens or early twenties, give the language about 75 more years of life.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
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By 2050, Spanish is going to be leading the way in Europe with 700 million native speakers, followed closely by the English language that will see native speakers increase from 369 million to 534 million.
English also retains the number one spot as the most commonly used language among internet users with 1,186,451,052 users and as the most used language by 61% of websites using various content languages. English is, therefore, crucial for anyone who wants to thrive on the global stage.
Listening is the easiest skill to practice
All four language skills are incredibly important and present their unique challenges. When I say that listening is easiest, I do not mean that it requires less time or commitment than reading, writing, or speaking.
English speaking countries
English is an official language in 40 countries and is partly spoken as a mother tongue in 18 other countries. The English language has its roots in the Indo-European language family. With 272.48 million native speakers, English has the highest prevalence in the United States of America.
Because of America's dominance over cinema, television, popular music, trade, and technology (including the Internet) throughout the years, it made English even more universal! Today, English has become the leading language in business, science, literature, politics, diplomacy and many more areas and industries.
Ranking from most influential to least, English is composed of words from: Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Russian, Maori, Hindi, Hebrew, Persian, Malay, Urdu, Irish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian, Zulu, and Swahili.
Across England and Wales, fewer than 1 in 50 people (aged 3 or over) could not speak English well or at all (2%, 863,000).
EU language rules
English remains an official EU language, despite the United Kingdom having left the EU.
The results of a new study published on the Science Daily website suggests that when it comes to learning languages, this conventional wisdom isn't completely true. Even many years later, the brain retains some memory of the languages you used to know.
Linguists predict that in 10 years the English language will continue to dominate the internet, even among those whose native tongue is not English. However, they expect it to mutate into a variety of different forms that we might not recognise as the language we know today.
We can't predict the future, but we can certainly learn from the past. And the answer to the above question is a resounding NO. Of course, you may have a difference of opinion, but consider the line of reasoning first.