English is currently one of the dominant languages on the planet due to the spread of the US and UK empires in the last century. With the rise of technology English may be made redundant with the advent of automatic language translation.
Just waiting for made up languages to become the norm (e.g. Esperanto), or hyper language learning.
Now ponder, as Douglas Hofstadter did, translating Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky from English into French, German, and Russian (Cyrillic .GIF) or (ASCII transliteration).
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Monday January 28 2019, @03:12AM (3 children)
And lets not dismiss the fact that Mandarin has a BIG head start in terms of native speakers, with English lagging third behind Spanish. (wikipedia) [wikipedia.org]
Mandarin Chinese 908.7 million
Spanish 442.3 million
English 378.2 million
With China expanding rapidly into pretty much every corner of the world, and the US and Britain deciding to isolate themselves, it's inevitable that Chinese will be the language that grows rapidly. Around here Mandarin is the first choice for a second language, while a lot of Chinese speakers don't even bother learning English beyond the "buying a coffee" level.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:36PM (2 children)
Where is "around here"?
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Wednesday January 30 2019, @02:28AM (1 child)
Vancouver BC and environs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:05PM
> Vancouver BC and environs.
Of course Mandarin is the most common second language. It's a Chinese exclave, bought and paid for.