Is there any other language that could genuinely challenge English for global dominance?

[Zeus]

Once the Chinese overtake the Americans, then 50-100 years after that, as long as they can maintain their position at the top and expand their global political and CULTURAL influence, then Chinese has a serious chance of overtaking English. It will be difficult though because the domination of the English language is due to America's superpower position, but also because of the global influence of the British Empire and the cultural influence of english-speaking nations........

[♥ Lily ♥]

People all over Europe, Asia, Africa, etc were going to start learning English?

I watched a documentary about English as a global language, and in the interesting documentary they showed that India has a population of 1.3 billion people and they have 22 regional languages in their nation.

So to prevent giving dominance to any regional language being used as a ligua franca over all the other regional languages in India, they use English as their lingua franca as it's a neutral language for them (as explained in the video documentary below,) as well as English being their nation's subsidiary official language which is used in law, business and administration.

English is used extensively in business and administration in India and has the status of a "subsidiary official language"; it is important in education, especially as a medium of higher education. Each state and union territory has one or more official languages, and the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages".

Also India are the world's third largest English language book producers.

In this educational video documentary below ('The Story of English Episode 1 - An English Speaking World - Part 2 / 7') it shows that being educated in India means knowing English 'so that they can move around in high social circles in the world.' The students in India state that 'English represents class' in India.

India is a rising superpower nation. Bollywood has a much larger audience than Hollywood movies, and the Bollywood industry produces a much larger revenue and profits each year than Hollywood.

1/4 of India's massive population are highly educated (putting them at an advantage in being given international jobs,) and 1/4 of India's massive population is more people than the entire population of the U.S. India is the world's 4th largest military power, and they have space rockets, etc.

8:45 - 9:26 (Indian females explain that 95% of the men in India request that their future wives are able to speak English, so they can move around in high social circles.)



In Hong Kong they have English speaking competitions with lots of contestants.

The Grand Final of The HKFYG Standard Chartered Hong Kong English Public Speaking Contest 2016.



English is also spoken at home by 36.9% of the people in Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Languages

Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil. English is the common language, and is the language of business and government, and the medium of instruction in schools.

Public bodies in Singapore, such as the Singapore Public Service, (which includes the Singapore Civil Service and other agencies), conduct their business in English, and official documents written in a non-English official language such as Malay, Chinese or Tamil typically have to be translated into English to be accepted for submission.

English is the main language of instruction in all school subjects in the Singaporean education system.

It is also the common language of the administration, and is promoted as an important language for international business.

Spelling in Singapore largely follows British conventions, owing to the country's status as a former crown colony.

English is the country's default lingua franca despite the fact that four languages have official status.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Languages

In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malaysian. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident).

Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia#Languages

There's been calls for a single language to be used in the EU parliament as it currently costs European taxpayers a lot of money each year translating and interpreting all the different languages used during debates and law-making for Europeans in the EU parliament.

English has one of the largest vocabularies of any language on earth. There's a mixture of German, Norse, Celtic, Norman French, Latin, and even some Greek and Spanish words found in the English vocabulary.... so a lot of Europeans can relate to English.

Currently we import and buy a lot of products made in China in western nations, and the instructions on the products we buy which are made in China are usually written in English, (albeit poor English, but just about understandable.)



Also English is the official language used in all global aviation communication... and it's the language of science, engineering and technology publications, international business meetings, and the main language of the internet. C'est la vie.

[♥ Lily ♥]

[Westbrook]

Yea that's kinda already going on in case you haven't noticed...

People all over Europe, Asia, Africa, etc were going to start learning English?

[Cristiano viejo]

Yea that's kinda already going on in case you haven't noticed...

Indeed. It is what I am saying. If that happened, why do you put your hands in the head when Spanish comes?

[Tooting Carmen]

bump

[JosephK]

Portuguese isn't doing very well...

[PaleoEuropean]

Chinese is too complex, English is easy because it's a mix of languages.

[Tooting Carmen]

Chinese is too complex, English is easy because it's a mix of languages.

Surely that (at least in theory) makes English even more weird and incoherent?

[Tooting Carmen]

With Africa growing French will become more spread, but I'm not rejoicing because these will end up in our continent.

Envoyé de mon ALE-L21 en utilisant Tapatalk

I was looking at Wikipedia's list of countries by population size - most of the world's fastest-growing populations are in Africa, and the world's most populous French-speaking nation is now the Democratic Republic of Congo! (That said, the countries with the largest numbers of speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese are outside their countries of origin too, so whatever).