World Language Extinction by 2060?

[barbarian]

.........

I still strongly believe that we Europeans need to learn and speak a couple of our Union languages, other than English.

with the increasing dominance of english, i believe, there will be no need for an additional EU language other than english. however, there will be need for chinese and indian language. i saw about 20 german in Beijing studying chinese. the needs come from economical reasons, since, i guess, chinese (and japanese) people hardly speak/learn english.

in ottoman, french was popular in 1800 's, after revolution. The german was 2nd lang. when german system was dominant in army. in republic time, you could select one of french, german or english in the schools as a second language. these days, almost everybody selects english and most of the schools provide french and german only for 3rd language after english.

with rise of south american economy, spanish may also be more important in the future.

 

[Carlitos]

Regional languages ​​are doomed to disappear. The choice of a language for international use may change depending on economic need of the time, of a change at the global level, easily change the choice of language for international use since the link with that language would be only in the commercial area not emotional.

 

[Reinaert]

I don't agree. Every language has a tendency to split itself in different varieties.
A global language isn't logic. It never has been.
Evolution is logic, and with it comes diversion.
Culture is also a regional affair.
The drive from the political right to come to a new world order is a nightmare.
One empire, one people, one language, one religion, one leader...
When did we hear that before?

 

[zanipolo]

Regional languages and dialects appear as languages once a nation is created. example Montengrian was a dialect , once Montenegro was created, Montegrian language was created. with this creation, it became the official language of Montenegro. This gaurantees its existance.

Have you ever seen a nation with a dialect as its official language....no. This is because the terminology of a dialect or language ( same things ) are treated equally , except a language has a government.

This thing happened to yugoslavia as well, serbian was the official language, and craotian, slovenian, bosnian, montengrian where dialects, but once they got independence , these dialects became languages overnight.

There is no world body that can dictate to anyone what is a language and what is a dialect.

moral is that languages and dialects exist IF the nation in question allows it

 

[Brett142]

I don't think any major languages will die. I do however think that English (if it already isn't) will become the world's 'Common tongue'. I think in the future most people will speak English, but that doesn't mean they have to forget or not use all of their native languages, it would be a boring world if that were the case but for the sake of mankind I think we all need to learn one language as a common tongue, and that is obviously going to be English.

I don't think Chinese (Mandarin) will ever replace English because it is simply far too different from almost every other language on earth, and lets face it, who wants to bother learning their alphabet, which I'm sorry is just too damn complicated. English is far too well established already, another reason why Mandarin won't replace it.

Also with mainly India but Pakistan, Malaysia and Nigeria (to name a few) having English quite well established already amongst politicians, universities and science, then English will have standing in the major powers of tomorrow, as well as the speakers it has already has. It is pretty much undefeatable.

 

[Cimmerianbloke]

Actually, Kama, Latin is still spoken every day by a few million people around the globe. Classical and medieval latin are indeed extinct languages, but romance languages, french, italian, spanish, catalan, romanian are direct offsprings of latin, and a lot of idioms have survived from classical times. Et Caetera, aquarium, padre, the list ist impressive. Languages are often compared to living entities by linguists. As organic beings, they are born, they grow, spread, decline and eventually die. The modern lifestyle and spreading of education only speeds up the process. Because culture is specific to the human race, it is a sensible thing to do to try to take care of them and sometimes help them to survive beyond their natural deathpoint.

 

[Franco]

It is interesting how mentality has changed about this matter over centuries. In ancient times multiplicity of languages was considered as something negative, a sort of God's punishment so men were condemned to not being able to understand each other. During the Middle Ages this conception survived until the outbreak of Protestantism, and later Romanticism and Nationalism. From then on particularity of languages began to gain consideration progressively until nowadays when language preservation can be considered even a religion for some (nationalists in Europe like the catalans, basques, etc) . Personally I don't pay as much importance to linguistic diversity as to being able to use a world lingua franca. The last thing serves me for a practical purpose, the former one does not. Some may say both things can coexist, maybe, but inevitably as long as more people begin to use a lingua franca other languages must die. I'm not saying it will happen soon, just in the long run. Similar processes happened before, for example pre-roman tongues died out in the Iberian peninusla in favor of Latin (aside from Basque).

 

[dony]

Zauriel : That is a shame. One language's death is the death of a culture.

Spaniards should never have destroyed most of the languages in the Latin America.

Sorry, maybe you are talking about the British and later the United-Statesians on the Northern part of the continent, currently Bolivia has like official languages(apart from español) : aimara, araona, ayoreo, baure, besiro, canichana, cavineño, cayubaba, chácobo, chimán, ese ejja, guaraní, guarasu’we (pauserna), guarayu, itonama, leco, machineri, mojeño- trinitario, mojeño-ignaciano, more, mosetén, movima, pacawara, quechua, reyesano, sirionó, tacana, tapieté, toromona, uru-chipaya, weenhayek, yaminawa, yuki and yuracaré.

Additionally, Guaraní , Quechua and Aimara are living languages in Paraguay, Ecuador, and Peru respectively .

 

[albanopolis]

This is a topic I know a bit, thanks to 3 college linguistic courses. There are about 6700 languages spoken today.Many of them in years to come will disappear. But about 100 of them will remain for another 5 000 years at least. Languages will profoundly change. English will feed their dictionary for another 500 years the way latin has influenced any other european language. In other words many existing languages will end up becoming creole.

 

[MOESAN]

I think every people or tribe has to preserve its language IF IT WANT IT - preserving rare restricted languages is a good thing for scientists or amateurs only -
as a lot of men or women do, every nation or tribe or cultural group of any sort can KEEP ON WITH ITS LANGUAGE AND PASS IT TO FOLLOWING GENERATIONS

 

[MOESAN]

... GENERATIONS, what does not it to learn some "INTERNATIONAL" or "KOINE" commercial language - we see everyday scientists of any origin doing with a kind of basic international english sufficient to positive and precise exchanges; some well known languages can do it as latine in old Europe: english, spanish, russian, hindi, mandarine, arabic...
it is true I feel a bit sad when I see languages I'm aware of dying around me...
and it is true also, language communication without ancient background sharings does not protect us against other kinds of communication problems, lack of concern, absurd exhausting indidividualist competition, bad trade... and we know: the biggest the group of exchanges, the scarcest the solidarity -