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The Washington Post has an article asking the question "Which languages will dominate the future?" The answer depends on your interests: making money in growth markets; speaking with as many people as possible; speaking only one language while traveling; or learning about culture. As you might imagine, the article concludes
There is no one single language of the future. Instead, language learners will increasingly have to ask themselves about their goals and own motivations before making a decision.
[...] In a recent U.K.-focused report, the British Council, a think tank, identified more than 20 growth markets and their main languages. The report features languages spoken in the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China — that are usually perceived as the world's biggest emerging economies, as well as more niche growth markets that are included in lists produced by investment bank Goldman Sachs and services firm Ernst & Young.
"Spanish and Arabic score particularly highly on this indicator," the British Council report concluded for the U.K. However, when taking into account demographic trends until 2050 as laid out by the United Nations, the result is very different.
Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Indonesian will dominate much of the business world by 2050, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. If you want to get the most money out of your language course, studying one of the languages listed above is probably a safe bet.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Non Sequor on Friday September 25 2015, @12:07AM
It'll come around. I swear.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:14AM
Bonvolu literumi la nomon de la lingvo korekte.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:31AM
"literumi" ?
Erm . . . please be literate and spell the name of the language correctly ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @12:44AM
OK
Se plaĉos al vi, silabu prave la nomon.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Non Sequor on Friday September 25 2015, @02:43AM
Mi nin estis conata cun ĉi dialektu
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @02:21PM
Hey now, can't we all sing "Jen Nia Mondo?"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday September 25 2015, @05:47AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:06AM
well, if you do, it won't take you a lot of time to speak fluently so it's not a lot of time wasted if it doesn't become popular. It's engineered to be easy to learn.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Friday September 25 2015, @01:20PM
I have started thinking that Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the point that overall you learn, say, more French if you learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you saved time and got farther, overall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition [wikipedia.org]). And it seems to me the easiest way for someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by seeing a simple & clean example.
I don't think aficionados usually see it as a replacement for a first (or native) language, though that has been done intentionally by some (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers [wikipedia.org], or search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto [wikipedia.org] for "native").
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective global route to everyone being able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people, learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. And it's fun!
(PS: There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros & cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or whatever one sees as most important. Also, feel free to point me to how link text should be covered with a url when posting.)
(Score: 1) by lcall on Friday September 25 2015, @06:22PM