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> The language of our time is English. And tomorrows language is mandarin. Let's not write off that 1.1B speakers. With the rate China is expanding its influen

> The language of our time is English. And tomorrows language is mandarin. Let's not write off that 1.1B speakers. With the rate China is expanding its influence in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years not speaking mandarin wouldn't look a bit odd.

mxcrossb 7y ago
If you really want to troll, try recommending Arabic as the language of Europe’s future ;)
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I don't think it is a troll at all. The Chinese are ascendant and Europe / The West is clearly shooting itself in the foot at every chance we get. Given another 100 years the GGPs vision might come true. Of course that's a long time and all kinds of change could happen but it isn't out of the realm of the possible, and far more likely than many other candidates. The big change point to me would be if leading scientific publications would start to be in Chinese rather than English and the Chinese language would give access to unique knowledge. To some extent this is already true but it is not debilitating yet. Once that happens though studying Chinese to keep up with scientific development would be about as important as studying English is for scientists today. Maybe English already has a lock-in on this but I'm not sure.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Well if EU English becomes a thing what'll probably happen is a mix of North African Arabic dialects and EU English, my family and I speak a mix of Algerian, British English, American English and French French
jonathanstrange 7y ago
There are many reasons why Mandarin will not become the next lingua franca, most importantly the writing system which unifies China but is even hard for Chinese to learn. As it looks now, it seems more likely that more and more Chinese will become fluent in English and that some English - possibly including a lot of Chinese loannwords - will be the most widespread language in the 100 years from now. But I think you were downvoted for the wrong reasons, since otherwise the argument is fairly sound. Chinese influence is continually increasing world-wide. It's mainly the writing system that prevents a wider spreading of Mandarin, and the Chinese cannot give it up because it unifies their nation. Another possible scenario is that other languages of China die out even more quickly than they already do now, thus paving the way to full mutual comprehensibility via Mandarin, which would then allow a drastic reform of the writing system. However, this seems unlikely to occur within the next 100 years.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  A drastic reform of the writing system happened 50 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

mxcrossb 7y ago

If you really want to troll, try recommending Arabic as the language of Europe’s future ;)

jacquesm 7y ago
I don't think it is a troll at all. The Chinese are ascendant and Europe / The West is clearly shooting itself in the foot at every chance we get. Given another 100 years the GGPs vision might come true. Of course that's a long time and all kinds of change could happen but it isn't out of the realm of the possible, and far more likely than many other candidates. The big change point to me would be if leading scientific publications would start to be in Chinese rather than English and the Chinese language would give access to unique knowledge. To some extent this is already true but it is not debilitating yet. Once that happens though studying Chinese to keep up with scientific development would be about as important as studying English is for scientists today. Maybe English already has a lock-in on this but I'm not sure.
faissaloo 7y ago
Well if EU English becomes a thing what'll probably happen is a mix of North African Arabic dialects and EU English, my family and I speak a mix of Algerian, British English, American English and French French

jonathanstrange 7y ago

There are many reasons why Mandarin will not become the next lingua franca, most importantly the writing system which unifies China but is even hard for Chinese to learn. As it looks now, it seems more likely that more and more Chinese will become fluent in English and that some English - possibly including a lot of Chinese loannwords - will be the most widespread language in the 100 years from now. But I think you were downvoted for the wrong reasons, since otherwise the argument is fairly sound. Chinese influence is continually increasing world-wide. It's mainly the writing system that prevents a wider spreading of Mandarin, and the Chinese cannot give it up because it unifies their nation. Another possible scenario is that other languages of China die out even more quickly than they already do now, thus paving the way to full mutual comprehensibility via Mandarin, which would then allow a drastic reform of the writing system. However, this seems unlikely to occur within the next 100 years.

theandrewbailey 7y ago
A drastic reform of the writing system happened 50 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters