← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · electrik
Thread ID: 12566 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2004-02-29
2004-02-29 14:06 | User Profile
English Set To Decline As A World Language Native English Speakers Will Be 5% Of World's Population By 2050
The Independent - UK Feb. 28, 2004
The proportion of people who speak English as their mother tongue is falling fast - contradicting the 19th-century notion that one day the whole world would speak the language of the British empire.
In a study published today in the journal Science, David Graddol, an expert in the development of languages, calculates that by 2050 the number of native English speakers will have fallen to about 5 per cent of the world's population, from about 9 per cent in 1950. Nine years ago, English was second to Chinese in the number of native speakers, with 1.1 billion native Chinese speakers, and 372 million native English speakers.
But by the middle of this century there will be more native speakers of Hindi and Urdu, and the number of native Arabic and Spanish speakers will virtually match that of native English speakers.
The study also found that Chinese and Arabic could soon be chosen ahead of English by people around the world seeking to learn a second language. ...
Full Story: [url]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=495505[/url] [url]http://www.rense.com/general49/fivep.htm[/url]
2004-02-29 16:37 | User Profile
WRONG!!!!!!!!!
English is already spoken all over the world.
2004-03-04 02:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=heritagelost]WRONG!!!!!!!!!
English is already spoken all over the world.[/QUOTE]
It's talking about native speakers. English is learned as a second language all over the world.
2004-03-04 02:32 | User Profile
Yeah, it's declining so fast that it's become the lingua franca of the Internet.