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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @04:08AM
What does it tell you? All it tells me is that where you have a bunch of different languages squished together, the people who live in those regions learn multiple languages out of necessity. When you have big, contiguous areas with one language, there isn't the need. You'd probably be very shocked to learn that in the regions where the US and Mexico share a border, a much larger percentage of the population speak multiple languages than they do in the center of the US. It isn't so shocking to me, but then again I'm not a dumbass who can't grasp these simple concepts.
Many people in Europe know English because they have to learn it. There are a lot of multi-lingual Swiss. It isn't because of some cultural superiority, it is because they have three fucking languages in that country. Did you know that there are a lot of bi-lingual people in Quebec? And there they have social pressures to make you only speak French. The rest of Canada doesn't speak French because, and I'll type this slowly so you can grasp it, there isn't a driving influence to.
It is such a simple concept that I am shocked it is so hard to grasp. No wonder the Europeans don't have the capability to create Googles and Facebooks.