What will be the language of the future?

Question

What language will eventually be the universal language spoken around the world? It eventually has to happen, a universal language, so I was just wondering what it would be. My guess is English.

I may be mistaken, but I think Chinese is extremely complicated and would be impossible to type on a computer. That is why I think English.

Answer 1

Definitely English, unless something happens to the United States that throws off its status as a world power.

China's supposedly getting stronger, though. I doubt it could catch up to the United States in terms of strength, but my second guess would be Chinese.

Answer 2

I know I'm going to get laughed off the board, but I really think that either Esperanto will eventually live up to it's hype, or machine language translation will hit such a high degree of proficiency that no particular language will become the dominant one.
I really believe we will be able to still talk in our own languages and have it translated at normal speech speed with small portable translators. If you really doubt that, just look at how far we've come with computers in the last four decades.
On the other hand, Esperanto has made some large strides in the world. The 65th most common language in print (not bad for a language with only 2 million+ speakers so far) out of 6000+ languages. It holds observer status (class B) at the UN, with input into UNESCO, UNICEF and a couple others.
Why would it even have a chance? For the very reason that much change on planet Earth occurs; money. At present the UN spends upwards of $100 million a year per official language on translation. (Six official languages BTW). On top of which the translation service struggles to meet it's commitments. Try looking up documents from the UN to get a feel for the inadequate state of translation that they endur, especially for the non-dominant languages. Or, for a sampling of some of the problems they have read Claude Piron's works at the site below. Claude was a UN translator for decades and has documented many of the problems.
So, in the short term, English will remain strong, Chinese will grow and so will Spanish. However, technology or finance or both will have the last say.

Answer 3

With how fast popularity with Spanish is growing, Spanish might become as, or even more used than English. I wouldn't mind because I'm fluent in Spanish. But in reality, I believe Chinese most likely will become the Universal Language because Chinese is already spoken by the most people in the world by far, but I would like English or Spanish or French or Portuguese to become one of the Universal Languages. I already know them and that means less work for me.

Answer 4

English and Mandarin (Chinese is the written form)

English because it is the language of business the world over and Chinese cos it is boomtown charlie for China. The massive growth and potential of the Chinese market is only being explored now and what we see currently is just the tip of the iceberg.

It is quite easy actually to "enter" Chinese characters into a computer. The program uses hanyu pinyin or romanized pronounciation/phonetics of the words.

Answer 5

English, most definitely. Chinese will never gain widespread popularity, if you ask me. 90% of the Americans I know can't speak even a little bit Spanish, French or Italian, let alone Chinese. Probably 99.99999% of Europeans can't speak Chinese either, although they are usually conversational in more than one language. This will probably stay this way - do we listen to Chinese pop music or watch Chinese soaps everyday globally? Of course not. Do you see Chinese authors on the global bestsellers lists? It is very simple - Chinese does not have the cultural leverage (not even in its neighborhood!!! - Korea, Japan) and it is extremely complicated to learn for more than 90% of the world population.

Answer 6

I agree: English. In Saudi Arabia, major street signs are written in two languages, one of which is Arabic. If you fly airplanes, the universal language of air traffic control is English. If you do any sort of science, the journals you read and write for are in English, and the professional meetings are carried on in English.

Answer 7

I say Chinese or English

Also, the only reason you think Chinese would be hard to type, is because you already fluently speak English, so its hard to imagine speaking/typing another language

Answer 8

English is going to be the main language then it will be spanish because so many of them is coming to America and getting jobs so people is going to have to learn how to communicate with them. But my answers are English as the main and spanish as the primary language.

Answer 9

except for the fact that China and Japan are the leaders in technology... My school started teaching chinese this year among many other schools in my county. it certainly is catching on... but i'm still sure that if there is a future (yes, i believe those global warming "lies") that English will always be the most internationally spoken language on earth.

Answer 10

chinese almost certainly, half the world population already knows chinese. China is the biggest, most populated, and most powerfull country in the world. If it wasn't for their birthcontrol law (2 children per family) They woudl deffinetly over run the world. So Start learning chinese now, directly.