I was discussing this topic in another thread and I got a lot of downvotes for suggesting that English will not forever be the world’s lingua franca. I’m not sure why people took such offence to this idea, I thought it was common knowledge that French would eventually surpass English (or even Mandarin) in terms of total users.
Anyway, I’ve linked the source of this projection. It’s a study/report from Natixis, a major corporate and investment bank (they were studying language growth to do some economic forecasting or whatever). The link to the report should be attached to this post (see page 2 for a summary, but there are subvariations of the projections and different graphs scattered all over the place in the report).
The reasoning is that most of the world is eventually going to start decreasing in population. But the world as a whole will still be growing in population. Why? Because Africa is currently experiencing a massive population boom, so the demographic weight of Africa is going to increase substantially (see, for example, the UN projections for world population growth). And of course the French language is widely spoken across Africa.
Now, is there room to critique this report? Absolutely. For instance, you could argue that it’s not fair to assume that Africa will continue to be predominately francophone; perhaps many African countries will move away from the French language now that the French colonial area is largely over. There is some movement in that direction. But regardless, this is a serious report, out of a serious institution, written by serious people. So the idea that French may surpass English a very real possibility, despite what some people seem to think.
You do realize how many people live in Asia, right OP?
RIGHT?!
Yeah but the populations in these countries is declining or will be soon. Just look at Japan for example. Whereas population growth in Africa accounts for most of the population growth of humanity as a whole in the coming century. Source: UN population projections
I got a lot of downvotes for suggesting that English will not forever be the world’s lingua franca.
I thought it was common knowledge that French would eventually surpass English (or even Mandarin) in terms of total users.
Perhaps you were downvoted for suggesting that one projection by one research group is both “common knowledge” and constitutes a scientific consensus when it is neither. A more accurate and honest title for your post would be, “YSK: The French language is projected by some research groups to be the world’s most widely spoken language in the world by 2050”
The most widely used language in 2050 could be Pig Latin for all I know. But I wouldn’t read one paper arguing as much and treat it like it’s the gospel.
Plus, it really doesn’t matter if it is the most commonly spoken language, it doesn’t mean it’ll take over as lingua franca.
He kind of wrote it out with edgelord vibes baked right in.
that’s funny because for the last 35 years I’ve been told Mandarin is going to be the most widely spoken language.
I have been citing this factoid for years, also to general incredulity. But the facts check out.
PS: I see two reasons for the pushback this is getting (apart from the fact that this is social media, where rudeness and cynicism are the norm, even here alas):
- cognitive dissonance: the putative fact is surprising and counter-intuitive, and most humans are irrational and respond badly to that
- you phrased it slightly incorrectly: even if French is somewhat likely to be the “most spoken”, it’s unlikely ever to be the “most widely spoken”
I thought it was common knowledge that French would eventually surpass English (or even Mandarin) in terms of total users.
I cannot wait to start working with a Gabonese subsistence farmer in French for my next software project.
I can’t read the report… it’s in French.
Wait 24 years 🙃
Yeah, sorry. I didn’t come across an English translation. And it’s a PDF which makes machine translation pretty tricky. There is some English language news coverage of the report though. For example here is an article about it from Forbes
After 2050, I’m the one who has to apologize for not posting in the majority language.
Échec et mat
Booo, fr🤮nch. I rather have it be Mandarin-Chinese so I don’t have to learn more stuff xD
I think this prediction would fit better here:
Being widely spoken in one particular region (or even a few regions) doesn’t automatically connect to being a global lingua franca. If that was the standard we’d be speaking Hindi or Mandarin here. Francophone Africa is projected to experience a popular boom, but even in the best case scenario (i.e. one where francophone Africa experiences better economic growth than other parts) that’d only make it more widespread in Africa. Globally there’s no way it can compete with the rising utility of Mandarin.
Aviation and computers are both dramatically English. For either Mandarin or French to supplant English as the world’s most widely spoken language we would need not just a large and wealthy segment of the world that natively speaks it, but a mechanism that encourages people who know neither French nor Mandarin nor English to learn one of the former and not the latter.
French has a bunch of former colonies and a considerable bit of history where it can be a useful shared language, but I don’t know if there’s anything beyond that which would encourage someone not going to these places to learn it for casual use.
Similarly, Mandarin is the second language of a bunch of non-native speakers who live or work in China, most of which are presumably Chinese natives whose first language was a different dialect like Cantonese.
(And I believe Hindu is in a common boat, where a massive chunk if it’s second-language speakers are natives of India with a separate dialect.)
It’s likely that modern English won’t reign forever as our species common language, but I think we’re more likely to see an English-mandarin pidgin take over than we are either modern French or modern Mandarin.
A study by French speaking researchers, published entirely in French, backed a French bank/investment firm, finds that French will be the future most spoken language in the world!
Totally unbiased study. Very and completely neutral.
This has to be satire, right?
A study by Munhwao speaking researchers, published entirely in Munhwao, backed by the government of North Korea, finds that Munhwao will actually be the most spoken language in the world in the future!!
I don’t think this should be a YSK. It’s a… Rather one sided study from a French bank for the French gov? And rather optimistic IMHO. Or wishful thinking. I doubt South Africa is going to change to French. And many other nations will stick to English or other languages. As a YSK… YSK some French still have aspirations to language dominance?
Yeah, it’s more like “mildly interesting, a study suggests French could potentially become the most widely used language by 2050”
IDK OP, I watched the future docuseries Firefly and it seemed like everyone still spoke English, but cursed in Mandarin.
Best counterargument is cultural export. We don’t see it with Chinese nor with African French. If at all Japanese, Spanish or South Korean. But for the Asian languages the learning curve is much higher and the utility lower.
Well you’ve linked a report in French, which won’t convince many English speakers. Which are probably the ones resisting your premise.
That being said, I fully expect English to be taken over by another language. However, what put English there in the first place? Economic power. That’s why I would bet on Mandarin over French. That’s a lot of birth replacement to beat out China and associated trade partners.
Again, I can’t read your evidence because I can’t speak French. I can’t tell what factors they’ve taken into account. So I just have my opinion/guess.
My money would be on Mandarin but… Boy it’s a hard language. The English has a few quirks but it is an EASY language compared to most, including French. IMO, this and not number of native speakers or economic power alone explains best English overtaking French and establishing itself as de facto lingua franca of the 21st century.
Boy it’s a hard language. The English has a few quirks but it is an EASY language compared to most, including French
Man, as a native English speaker, I totally disagree with this. We are, as I emphasized in another comment, a fucking mess phonetically, and a lot of this is ironically because English plundered so much from French (among other languages). So much of English you just have to “know” on a nearly case-by-case basis, and I imagine the internal systems I use to subconsciously keep track of these inconsistencies are a terrifying web of spaghetti. The conjugation is fucked six ways from Sunday, there are idioms out the ass (see the ones I’m unintentionally using here), there’s sooooo much slang, and there’s practically a bottomless pit of words – so much so (in combination with how common it is as a second language) that Wikipedia maintains a simplified English version using a list of only the 1000 most common words.
I can’t say I’ve learned French, but even accounting for how much I already accidentally know of it (knowing more obscure English words aids a lot in translation to the point I can often read sentences with knowing just a handful of basic French connective words), I’d bet it’s a ton easier. The main thing I’d hate, like I do with Spanish, is gendered nouns (god, they’re so fucking superfluous), but I’d still say it beats the weird peculiarities of English.
Most non-native speakers, to my understanding, would consider English quite hard to learn, even when factoring in all the English media they’re surrounded by growing up.
English didn’t plunder French; it absorbed a lot of French after the English crown became ruled by the French
Sorry, I meant that for comedic effect; I understand that the English language isn’t an agent and that there was no singular instance where English went over, grabbed over 1/4 of its words from French, and came back. I know that “plundering” isn’t how language truly works. I do know about Old Norman’s influence on Middle English, I do know some about the Hundred Years’ War’s effect on its usage, I do roughly understand the Great Vowel Shift, and I have a fuzzy understanding thereafter. I guess I know that some political loanwords (like the 18th-century “bureaucracy”) and some cultural ones (like “boutique”) made their way into English, but I really don’t know much else.
So you’re saying you only speak one language, but you just don’t believe something like French would have any weird or complicated or confusing shit? You don’t sound like you’re in the position to even make an opinion. We need to hear from a Chinese person who’s learned English and French.
All of this is true, and yet basic English is easy. Then it just keeps throwing shit at you for the rest of your life, but then it’s too late.
The point about economic power makes a lot of sense. I guess it really comes down to how well Africa’s economic development goes. China’s development happened very rapidly, it’s possible that something similar might happen in some regions of Africa. But that’s very hard to predict. But right now China surpassing being/becoming the world’s largest economic player seems like a very safe bet
Not even going to bother trying to translate it. Their idea is fucking stupid with zero support.
English overtook French as the primary international language due to economic power of the English speaking countries. Even when French was the international language it was not that popular. Only the elites and well educated spoke the language outside of native speakers. Both Spanish and Mandarin have more native speakers than English today.
English has a huge amount of people who speak it as a secondary language. The total amount of people who speak it today is estimated to be 1.5 billion. It is the most common language spoke around the world.
The barriers to reverse this trend on a global scale and swap to another language is almost laughably difficult today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
Yeah, if there’s a new lingua franca in 25 years (which would be strange, because the proliferation of increasingly highly accurate LLM translation would seemingly add pressure in favor of whatever the status quo is), I would bargain on Mandarin. And that’s if, which I seriously doubt – even assuming the US completely fucks up the next 20 years as badly as the last 10 and China dominates the world economy by a vast margin. English is one of the hardest major languages to learn; ironically, the globalism that let it proliferate arguably isn’t helping a total beginner as English increasingly pulls in loanwords.
What’s a language that’s even harder to learn? Mandarin. English is a fucking mess phinetically, but at least it doesn’t have tens of thousands of characters and an extreme emphasis on particular intonation. Japanese has kanji, sure, but there’s a foundation in the form of kanas which are easy to learn and are phonetic. Especially with English entrenched as a secondary language, pivoting to teaching Mandarin would need an enormous incentive compared to China’s incentive to just, like, use an LLM to translate messages etc. bound to non-Madarin-speaking countries.
French? The linga franca? That doesn’t make any sense
Your comment is really confusing. If you are talking about the original lingua franca, it was a mix of Mediterranean languages and so contained French.
If you mean in the sense of an international vehicular language, French has historically been the language of diplomacy and is one of the official languages of the UN.
That English is such a international language is a pretty recent development.
The joke is that “franca” = French. Though etymologically the phrase is from Italian, the root of “franca” is the same root that gives us the word “French.”
The original “lingua franca” was actually a mix of dialects from Italian sailors—in the middle ages and the renaissance, most people in the rest of the world referred to all western Europeans as “Franks”.
I knew a Frank who went to France once — not sure if that counts.
