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.
🤢
Sacrebleu!
I’d guess mandarin is the most used language. But not the most widely used language common across speakers who speak a different native language. Or across regions. Even if French takes over in Africa, you’d have a similar problem surpassing English. Also their influence over the global economy will limit this.
Merde
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.
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”
神聖的睾丸 !
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!!
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.
IDK OP, I watched the future docuseries Firefly and it seemed like everyone still spoke English, but cursed in Mandarin.
that’s funny because for the last 35 years I’ve been told Mandarin is going to be the most widely spoken language.
French? The lingua franca? That doesn’t make any sense
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 being/becoming the world’s largest economic player seems like a very safe bet
I thought it was common knowledge that French would eventually surpass English (or even Mandarin) in terms of total users.
This was definitely news to me, because I’ve always assumed (and read) it would be mandarin.
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.
