I'm really not sure which way this could end up shaking out. English has some bizarre spellings, due in no small part to the huge percentage of loan-words it h

I'm really not sure which way this could end up shaking out. English has some bizarre spellings, due in no small part to the huge percentage of loan-words it has vacuumed up from all over the world. On the other hand, if you can speak it, and know the basics of how the phonemes translate to print, you can generally make yourself understood - it mite not be kompleetlee korrect allways, but thars a lot of error tolarenz. On the other hand, Mandarin script is abstract enough that you can conceivably use it to transliterate all sorts of languages. Historically, non-Chinese languages, like Manchu, Mongolian, Turkic, Korean, and Japanese have been written using Chinese characters. Not to mention its use as a written lingua franca in the pre-modern period for all of the more-or-less incompatible regional Chinese dialects. You do have to know thousands of characters for the ideas that you want to express, rather than the few dozen letters and letter combinations that English uses. I think as long as English-speaking entertainment is dominant (Hollywood, the music industry, television), English is going to continue to grow.