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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: 1) by Francis on Friday September 25 2015, @03:45AM
I'd like to point out that learning minor languages means that while you can't use them everywhere, you do have a competitive advantage if you're doing business in that location.
Right now if you go to China and speak Mandarin you're going to have a lot of credibility with the locals in most parts of China, but in 10 or 20 years, that's probably not going to be the case. You'd have far more credibility in Guangdong by learning Cantonese, same goes for other areas that don't speak Mandarin as their first language. You'll be able to connect with the locals a lot more easily and show a willingness to invest in the relationships.