Will English as a global language ever be threatened?
Over the last 50 years, English has firmly established itself as the international language of business, travel and politics. Other European heavyweights have fared less well in worldwide terms: French has faded badly and the influence of German was curtailed after the Second World War. Meanwhile, Spanish continues to thrive in the Americas.
But can we take the dominace of English for granted? Latin used to be a lingua franca but was wiped off the map. Will Chinese ever muscle in due to an encomony rumbling along like a juggernaut and sheer weight of native speakers? Hindi too perhaps? Will Russian assert itself as they enjoy a stranglehold on much of the world's energy reserves?
Or can we ever reach a stage where English is understood by most of the world population? There is a long way to go in that respect of course, even in Europe, but will the march of English continue unopposed?
Does it matter? I have seen a thousand thread about this already, which all ended up in trolling and nonsense. The answer is it doesn't matter, because by the time English is not an important language anymore you'll be dead, and so you won't care.
English is the most learned language. English gives you the chance to get the most information about basically anything you want. English is simple to learn at a decent level compared to most other important languages. English is everywhere. English is at the center of the world.
<<Latin used to be a lingua franca but was wiped off the map.>>
No one was learning Latin on the internet at that time though. No multi-platinum bands who sang in Latin existed. It was pretty complex (compared to English). There was no TV or movies.
<<Will Chinese ever muscle in due to an encomony rumbling along like a juggernaut and sheer weight of native speakers?>>
Only after they also produce several multi-platinum bands and singers that become extremely famous worldwide, they produce some extremely influential entertainment (like The Simpsons, Looney Tunes, etc.), and it is possible to get a lot of knowledge about anything in the world in Chinese without anything being censored.
But by the time any major changes have occurred, we will all be dead, so who the hell cares.
<<Will Chinese ever muscle in due to an encomony rumbling along like a juggernaut and sheer weight of native speakers? Hindi too perhaps? Will Russian assert itself as they enjoy a stranglehold on much of the world's energy reserves?>>
I suspect that if China is going to start "muscling in", one of the first places it will grab is Siberia, and then they'd go for the Middle East. China would then have a stranglehold on the energy reserves. Russian wouldn't be important anymore.
If China really starts to show off its muscles, I suspect they'd repopulate Europe, the Americas, Asia, etc. with native Chinese, and the rest of us won't be around anymore. If that happens, learning Chinese wouldn't be useful for us at all.
I guess you might as well study English, for now.
If there is any real threat to English as a global language, it is its own success itself. The problem is that English's being a global language is not entirely compatible with English's being a single unified language in the long run, and the more successful English is at the former the less successfuul English will be at the latter.
On the native-speaker end, the matter is that English as a coherent language is no guaranteed matter on a timescale of multiple centuries, and rather it is likely to take the road taken by Latin, Classical Arabic, Old/Middle Chinese, Old Norse, and so on in the long run.
On the non-native-speaker end, the matter is that what many non-native speakers learn is likely quite different from any sort of English spoken by any native speaker, and furthermore, the likelihood that many non-native speakers not in direct contact with native speakers in Real Life will be able to truly understand the English dialects (or, in the long term, Anglic languages) spoken at home by native English-speakers will go down over time, not up. Likewise, the further non-native speakers are removed from actual native speakers of English, what they are taught as being English gets further and further from any actual English variety, to the point that intelligibility of such by native speakers of English may actually be compromised by the widespread learning of English on a global scale.
Although I don't agree that English could split up like Latin due to globalisation (we would need a nuclear war to send us back to the caves), it is true that non-native speakers are taking over the language and could eventually declare it their own. For example, non-native English speakers often sing in English rather than their native language and can sing their English however they want. They could have a big influence on the language without even being native speakers.
>>Although I don't agree that English could split up like Latin due to globalisation (we would need a nuclear war to send us back to the caves)<<
I disagree from personal experience. I have had other native speakers of English *insist* that I was a non-native speaker of English from samples of my normal everyday speech. Hell, I have given up on posting speech samples simply because I have to explain every single time that 1) I natively speak English and 2) I do not have a speech impediment. And mind you that my dialect probably has at most a 150 or so years distance from General American, which should not be that far in and of itself either.
I think in 50 years nearly everyone in the world will speak English, and countries will eventually decide to abandon their native languages in favor of English.
fraz : « Will English as a global language ever be threatened? »
C'est déjà en cours. C'est le sujet qui vient juste après la disparition imminente du dollar.
En el transcurso de nuestras vidas la preponderancia del inglés permanecerá intacta. Podés dormir tranquilo.
<<En el transcurso de nuestras vidas la preponderancia del inglés permanecerá intacta. Podés dormir tranquilo. >>
A menos que la gripe porcina arrase con toda la vida de la Tierra. Espero que así sea. Me he hartado de las idioteces de la humanidad. Pero me equivoco, porque en ese caso también tendrías razón tú, porque el transcurso de nuestras vidas habría acabado.