will the global dominance of English language reversed someday?

Question

Historian allwasy said, any language can dominate the world for a period of time, such as Spanish, and someday in the future, it will be replaced by another language ,which will become the next global language. Surly, the dominate language is decided by the power of a nation holding a specific language.

In the future, if the UK and US falls down, will some other language will replace English as the news global communication tool. For example, Chinese or Spanish language?

Answer 1

I dont' know, but...

We need an "International auxiliary language" like esperanto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_language

Why not english as the International Language? This seems a reasonable question, but

* English is by no means easy to master it is, generation after generation, the international language of a certain elite
* any nationally dominant language puts non-native speakers (in this case 90% of the world population) in an unfavourable position
* English - no matter how widespread still only reflects one specific type of culture, which may be upsetting to some
* in stress situations, one tends to lose ones ability to speak an irregular foreign language
* the above also applies to all other big languages as French, Spanish or Chinese.

Answer 2

If ever I asked which language is mostly spoken on this planet, I guess most of you would answer, Chinese, Mandarin, because of the huge population China has!

Back to your question, I do not think English dominates the world but I would say, English / French / Spanish are official languages of many Countries (not China, nor Japan though). When you are in China and want to set up a businese, you have to understand the laws / regulations which are written in Chinese though you may hire a good translator to help. Likewise in Japan / Korea or other Asian countries, you also need the translators if you cannot read their languages.

So, I believe people would stick to what they are using now and would not change much within this century.

Answer 3

Nope. English is the language of science, air traffic controllers, and more. You can publish a science paper in any language but if you want the world to be able to read it you will need to translate it into English. French is considered the language of diplomacy. English is taught in schools all over the world for a reason - it is found everywhere. I do not think French is easier than English and neither do a lot of other people. English is the world's "second language" (except for native speakers) and as a result of the global reach of the historical British Empire is found all over the world.

Answer 4

I don't think so. It has itself established as the world language in our time of globalization. So all over the world people are learning English and use it to communicate. That's a big difference to older world languages which weren't truely global.
Just take a look at how many people from all over the world are in Yahoo Clever using English for their exchange. Something like this didn't happen in older days.
I can imagine that Chinese becomes a very important language in the future but a big obstacle for making it a world language would be the characters.

Answer 5

Actually, in the 19th century, Frech was the International language most often spoken. When a language is spoken internationally to a great extent, it means that the country it originates from is very influencial economically AND culturally. Right now, it's the US. The process is in full swing right now, and it can't be reversed. But if say Brazil becomes an International super-power, then Portuguese will be an Internationally known language (the type spoken in Brazil anyway, cause it's different from the one in Portugal slightly).

Answer 6

Perhaps Chinese or Japan will dominate as languages because these are the economies of the future. This depends on what language they want to use for business. If they decide that English is an easier, more widespread or efficient language to use for business then they will use English for business and Chinese or Japanese at home.

In Luxembourg they use something they call Germanish (I suspect it is Flemish) among themselves and use French and English for business.

You may be interested in reading about lingua francas or trade languages.

Answer 7

Very probably yes. Inspite of domination, English is a clumsy language. George Bernard Shaw spelled 'Fish' as 'ghytio'. Gh as in 'enou gh, Y as in year li(yearly).tio as in atten tio n. B U T and P U T sound differently why not spelled differently ? There is or shall be the need to replace English with a better language.

Answer 8

Of course, nothing lasts forever. Chinese will be the next world language, without a doubt!

Answer 9

since eastern countries started learning english but no sign of english people learning other languages ,there r less chances for any other language to dominate.

Answer 10

It's possible. China is making its way up there and more business majors are learning Chinese to communicate with Chinese businesses. Maybe it will be China. My vote is on China in 50 years.