Has English reached its peak of influence?

Guest   Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:58 pm GMT
^Good point.
Uriel   Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:33 pm GMT
<<With the relative decline of the US in its overall strength in the world, will the status of English be affected?>

Oh, I think reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mak Twain. Although there seems to be no end of people waiting breathlessly to pronounce us dead and irrelevant. ;)

I don't know that we can lay the popularity of English around the globe at the US's feet; it goes back to the British empire, of which we were once a part. What the British did that will ensure the continuance of their language for many years to come was plant it in many different places around the globe -- Canada, the US, South Africa, Australia, NZ -- and then build many of those places up into modern economic powers who still participate in a widespread network of trade and cultural exchange, and also bring influence to bear on their own immediate environs. It's not really dependent on any single country.

That global network hasn't really been implemented by any of the other major economic or formal colonial powers whose languages have gone international -- their direct cultural and linguistic influence has often tended to stay regional, or concentrated in economically-deprived regions, or both. Such has been the lot of Spanish, which clusters in the Americas, and French, which outside of France is mostly spoken in Africa and in small Pacific islands. Chinese and Russian have mainly made their way into immediately neighboring nations and no farther. Portuguese has a couple not so influential strongholds in Africa, a couple tiny enclaves in Asia, and just the one big one in Brazil -- which effectively gives them no one important to talk to in their own language, and no major ties between Portuguese-speaking regions that might bind them together in culture or trade.

Arabic has a far-reaching influence from northern Africa to Asia, but is closely tied to particular culture and religion, and currently is bogged down with issues related to those aspects, as well a vast inconsistency in economic wealth and power throughout its sphere of influence. I think of all the languages that really have a shot at supplanting English as a world language, Arabic would have my money on it. Soon as they quit fighting over religion and turn to fighting over money and power, like *normal* people! ;)
Murray   Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:09 am GMT
It appears monolingual English graduates face a bleak economic future as multilingual competitors flood into the workforce from all corners of the globe. These new polyglots, and the companies that employ them, have significant competitive advantages over their monoglot rivals, including a vital understanding of different cultures, in a world faced with rapid globalisation. Around 25 percent of the British population speaks a language other than English, but about half of these people have that another language as their mother tongue. In the United States, 28 percent of the population speaks a language other than English, mainly Spanish, and many of these people have Spanish as their first language.
Guest   Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:49 am GMT
Yeah, top engineering, finance, and accounting firms are scrambling to hire people with Spanish or Polish language skills.

Maybe 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001% of top jobs require any kind-of multiple languages, and those kinds-of jobs are only available to the top students at the world's top universities anyway.