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.
Projected by one research group. My French isn’t good enough to tell how well they did their job.
Knowing how serious especially the French take French, this theory reads a bit try-hard-y. We were the language of the world, the language of royalty and diplomacy. And then the blasted roastbeefs passed us on the right. But now we play the long game to get back to the top. I’m not saying this can’t be true. It’s just there is this graph in the summary that almost seems comical with the optimistic projection:
As I said, I didn’t read it all so take my criticism with un peu du sel. I remain unconvinced that English will be displaced here. English has insane orthography but relatively simple grammar. French is two for two on the insanity scale (as somebody who had to learn both as foreign languages in school I feel comfortable in making this judgment). English got spread around the world with the roastbeef empire; French didn’t quite reach those heights. They had to have a revolution or two and in between Napoleon screwed it up by selling Louisiana.
The stark contrast between the “scénario optimiste” and “scénario pessimiste” feels like they really didn’t want to suggest French would decline in use.
“Absolute worst case scenario? French sees an extremely minimal decline over the next 30 years. Virtually zero change. Best case scenario? TO THE MOOOOOOOOOON! 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀”
That graph feels like comedy.
Would a graph depicting Africa’s population growth also look like comedy to you? Because it would look pretty similar to that graph too
Not really. “Africans” doesn’t really have humor value in the way that “Francophones” does.
I’m not saying the chat is definitely wrong. I’m just saying that a chart of language use in which French is flat until the present and then is forecasted to suddenly take off while everything else stays level reads like an example of well-executed visual humor.
I am slightly confused by the graph, which does not appear to list English or any of the Chinese languages?
It’s reasonable to argue that ‘lingua franca’ means the language used for trade, travel, diplomacy etc. - and that does not necessarily have to mean the language spoken by the plurality of the world’s population.
Yeah, that’s another reason to criticize this graph. And in fairness to the authors and from what I understood, they don’t just look at native speakers. The theory is that due to population decline everywhere but Africa and the dominance of French on the continent French’s rise to lingua franca will be a pull factor. People who want to do business with these African francophone areas are more likely to learn it.