What Language Will the World Speak In 2115?

An anonymous reader writes: Throughout human history, different languages have emerged and died, waxed and waned in relative importance, evolved, and spread to new locales. An article in the Wall Street Journal considers what languages the world will speak a hundred years from now. Quoting: "Science fiction often presents us with whole planets that speak a single language, but that fantasy seems more menacing here in real life on this planet we call home—that is, in a world where some worry that English might eradicate every other language. That humans can express themselves in several thousand languages is a delight in countless ways; few would welcome the loss of this variety.

Some may protest that it is not English but Mandarin Chinese that will eventually become the world's language, because of the size of the Chinese population and the increasing economic might of their nation. But that's unlikely. For one, English happens to have gotten there first. It is now so deeply entrenched in print, education and media that switching to anything else would entail an enormous effort. We retain the QWERTY keyboard and AC current for similar reasons. ... Yet more to the point, by 2115, it's possible that only about 600 languages will be left on the planet as opposed to today's 6,000. Japanese will be fine, but languages spoken by smaller groups will have a hard time of it."

Comments

Chinese that speak English

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to the hippest clubs or most-expensive shopping malls in Shanghai or Hong Kong. You'll see elite Chinese and HK kids speaking English, not Chinese. More often than not, they're speaking English with an English accent too.

You don't see elite Western kids in New York or London hanging out and speaking Chinese.

The same goes for rich kids in Rio and Sao Paulo. The same goes for rich kids in Bangkok, Istanbul, Mexico City and Riyadh. The global elite speak English. They're not going to be learning Chinese any time soon.

(The exception is Japan, of course. But Japan is Japan. They're not going to be speaking English any time soon, elite or not).

The issue isn't population numbers. It's what the global 1% are doing. And they're learning English in increasing numbers.

Re:Quebec Language Police

[Rei]

French has a reputation for linguistic preservation efforts, but it doesn't really seem to take. Television is télévision. Telephone is téléphone. Electricity is électricité. Etc. You know what these words are in Icelandic? Sjónvarp, sími, and rafmagn . Go to Wikipedia and look up random modern technical words from different fields (ideally ones not named after a person, since that's cheating) and browse over the language bar on the left to see what they're called in French vs. Icelandic (or any other languages). For example, photon, integral, mitochondria, polymer, autism, transistor, seismograph, hippocampus, supernova, and tyrannosaurus, to pick some. According to Wikipedia, in French they're photon, intégral, mitochondrie, polymère, autisme, transistor, sismographe, hippocampe, supernova, and tyrannosaurus. In Icelandic they're ljóseind, heildun, hvatberi, fjölliða, einhverfa, smári, jarðskjálftamælir, dreki, sprengistjarna and grameðla, respectively.

Why does French have this reputation for protecting their language so much? It sure doesn't look that way. Maybe the difference is with common words? For example, Icelandic has a problem with people using English as slang in everyday speech. For example, "hæ" and "bæ" as casual greetings ("hi", "bye") are so common that they're pretty much embedded into the language. Does French do this sort of thing too? Maybe they're better about that. But at least in terms of new words coming into the language, I just don't see where they get this reputation from.

(It should be noted that not only does Icelandic come up with native-based words for technical terms, but we actually use them. We actually say "tölva", not computer, "sjónvarp", not TV, "rafmagn", not electricity, etc. If there's a technical term that a person doesn't know the proper Icelandic for then they use the English, but in maybe 90% of cases, once the proper Icelandic for a word becomes widely known, it actually gets used) (there are of course those 10% exceptions where nobody liked the proper term so most people don't use it, of course... ;) Pizza / flatbaka being a good example)

Re:Quebec Language Police

[Rei]

That argument doesn't fly in face of the fact that it still goes on like that to this day here in Iceland, and we're not at all isolated. It's not like in 1850 there were people coining words for smartphone (snjallsími), tablet computer (spjaldtölva), coelecanth (bláfiskur), muon (mýeind), hybrid car (tvinbíll), etc, etc. This is not some old phenomenon, it's actively occurring to this day. Tablets are a great example because that was a really recent thing, when they first came out stores were selling them as "tablets", but once the word spjaldtölva started to hit the public sphere, there was a large-scale shift, and now all of the stores sell them as spjaldtölvur. Probably 90% of new things** that become popular eventually follow that pattern. Not 100%, and it's not an instant shift, but a large majority get there eventually.

And again, I'm not faulting French for taking English words straight out or English for taking French words straight out or anything of the sort. That's actually the most common thing to do. I'm simply pointing out that the reputation of French for "coining their own words rather than adopting international terms" doesn't even remotely seem to pass muster. If someone in another country invents or discovers something, it seems that almost always the French name for it is just a pronunciation-and-spelling-adjusted version of the international name. That's hardly "preserving the language", at least compared to what happens here with new words.

** The big exception nowadays, and the one that's causing a lot of concern with lingustic traditionalists, are *software* terms, things like, for example, what you may see in your menubar. Relatively few apps have Icelandic support. Heck, people even say "CVS" as "See-Vee-Ess" rather than "Seh-Vaff-Ess", they pronounce the letters as they're pronounced in English. Where this will all lead, I don't know....