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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: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2015, @12:39PM
I speak a lot of languages and I agree with you: the language to learn is still English. Even if America fades as a global power, the chances are very good that English will persist in its current role because it's also what India uses, and they're ascendant. We also have history as our guide: Akkadian was the "global" language to learn long after its speakers had gone to dust, then Greek came along, which had a good, long run even after Athens and Sparta had become meaningless backwaters. Of course, Latin. The global language for a long time after the barbarians sacked Rome. English, too, has a ton of linguistic momentum--it's the language of business, science, culture, etc. Just one of those areas by itself could carry the language along for another 1,000 years.
Washington DC delenda est.