We’re already at the point when any “big shot” pretty much has to know English in order to be successful. Even other varieties of English are losing out to American English, as teenagers in the UK and Australia are gradually shifting away from their native pronunciations towards the American pronunciations. Even in America itself, varieties of English such as Southern and North Central American are being overtaken by the “West Coast” accent among younger generations (ie people born in the 80s and later).
In Europe (and probably in Asia/Latin America too) people already pepper their native languages with English words like “super”, “sexy” and “cool”. Hundreds of millions of young Chinese people are learning English to compete in the global economy.
Do you think we’ll reach a point where American media is so pervasive, and English is so well known among the younger generations, that people in foreign countries will begin teaching their children English instead of their first language? And will the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada eventually have completely “Americanized” accents? It’s already happening to the US itself - many kids in Georgia and New Jersey sound more similar to Southern Californians than they do to their own grandparents.
If so, how long will it take? 50 years? 100 years? A few centuries?
It certainly won’t be the whole world as long as France keeps their protective attitude about the French language–and that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.
I’d go with Spanish, actually. French is so…last century.
As for the OP:
Yeah, probably. Even if the US declines as seemingly everyone is predicting I think English will continue to expand (Australia and Canada are two up and coming powers and they basically speak English as well, the perchance for French in Canada not withstanding). IIRC, it’s something like 1.5 billion folks who currently speak English (as opposed to the 200 million French and 400 million Spanish speakers) and growing at this point. While (Mandarin…1.2 billion btw) Chinese would seem to be a shoe in for the next big thing (especially for all those who seem to think China is the next or even current big thing), I don’t see it ever catching on as a major international language like English is. I’m not so sure that the American ACCENT is going to be as dominant as the OP makes it out, but the language? Yeah, eventually I think it is and will continue to be the lingua franca (with a nod to our Gallic brethren and sistren) for a long time to come.
People keep saying that but it isn’t going to happen. Tonal languages are very difficult for non-native speakers to learn, the writing system is incompatible with most modern technology and it just sounds funny to most people that aren’t Chinese. Yes, a whole bunch of people speak it today but that is because the vast majority of them grew up in China or Chinese enclaves.
English has an advantage because it is a mongrel language with a huge vocabulary (that is both good and bad). Word order isn’t especially important. It is difficult to learn to speak or write it perfectly but it is very easy to speak it poorly and still be understood by a native speaker.
It would be more indicative not how many native speakers of a language there are but how many non-native-speakers of it there are.
According to this (insert the standard “oh no it’s wikipedia” disclaimers):
English: 611 M
Hindustani: 215 M
Malay: 204 M
Mandarin: 193 M
French: 153 M
Arabic: 132 M
Russian: 113 M
Basically English by far exceeds all others in how many second-language-speakers it has. I think this will only grow, for many reasons. Because it is already so widespread, because it is easy to learn (and I mean easy to learn to be understood, not easy to learn to be completely proficient), because its grammar is so comparatively simple - no cases, no genders, no word modifications except adding an “s” once in a while, and of course because SO much of modern pop culture comes out in English.
Not even all Chinese speak Mandarin that well (or at all in some cases). It’s never going to be a language used extensively internationally, though I could see people who want to do business in China learning it (just like a lot of folks know Japanese who work in Japan a lot or Korean who work in South Korea).
English maybe, American English certainly not. In terms of number of people who speak at least some English, the US is only in third place, behind India and China.
I predict that long before the whole world has adopted English as first language will AI have made learning foreign languages obsolete. Our computers and smartphones will do all translation for us.
The whole world will probably eventually know English, in the same way that the whole educated world used to know Latin (and a much larger proportion of the world is educated now than it used to be) but it won’t be standardised completely to one accent or slang. After all, you can’t decide in your own country if fizzy drinks are soda or pop, or if you sit on a sofa, a lounge or a davenport. Indian English is busy inventing new words and other countries with large English-speaking populations do the same - they undoubtedly understand your way of saying things, but they’re not going to let go of their own way.
There is a concept of Basic Global English which is a core set of the English language which allows non-native speakers to quickly ramp up their skills to useful productive levels. I have heard it said that in an international work setting, NESB people find native speakers relatively unintelligible compared to other ESL speakers - we are too slangy and speak too fast.
So, yeah, English is going to get bigger, but we native speakers aren’t necessarily going to continue to “own” it as the non-native speakers start to more and more outnumber us (and Okrahoma’s numbers above show that they already outnumber us somewhat, counting all the Anglosphere)
Certain American dialects are changing - but I don’t think the whole nation is becoming more uniform. For example this Inland Northern American English - Wikipedia is happening in the North, which sounds peculiar to my ear, and newer dialects (Miami accent - Wikipedia) are still developing.
Very dubious. Germans, Italians, Spaniards, are yet to teach their children the national language instead of the regional dialect or language, so I don’t see them teaching them any “international language” instead.
And you’re also making the assumption that English will keep its dominant position. When the major world economical power will be China, much more people will learn Mandarin because it will be useful, marketable, and in many cases necessary. Chinese people and businessmen will eventually expect people they deal with to be fluent in their language, making it this knowledge even more necessary in business, in sciences, in diplomacy, etc… At some point it won’t appear so obvious that one should learn English rather than Chinese or Portuguese (for Brazil).
There’s this assumption people tend to make that things will keep following the same trend they have experienced (see the current thread with people assuming there will be few significant technological changes during the 21st century by comparison with the 20th century). The world has changed prodigiously during the last 100 years. It will change prodigiously in the next 100 years, and you can’t take anything for granted. English can perfectly slowly lose its “only international language” status over the next decades, let alone centuries.
When I think of it, not even counting technological advances. If translating machines become extremely efficient in the decades to come, one can imagine a future where nobody except scholars and eccentrics will bother to learn other languages.
And what makes you assume that “popular culture” will keep coming out in English? What makes you believe than the major movies and the trendy musical styles won’t come from non English-speaking countries in the future?
Once again, do you think that the 1.3 billions Chinese won’t produce movies, music, books, etc…? Do you think that when China will be by far the largest market for movies, music, etc… nothing will change? That Chinese producers won’t think first of the Chinese market? That American producers won’t?
Can’t you imagine a world where all the trendy music and cool movies come from China or India or Brazil? Not understanding a word of English didn’t prevent European kids to become crazy about American bands during the 50s-60s, and European producers and entertainers adopted this style of music because that’s what was selling and that was what they liked. American kids and American producers and entertainers might very well do exactly the same in 2030-2040.
