Indo-Aryan Languages Both Hindi and Urdu from the Indo-Aryan language are potential languages of the future. Hindi is the native language of 535 million people in India. Like China, this population continues to grow every year. Urdu is widely spoken by 170 million people around the world.
According to the Engco Forecasting Model explained above, the 5 most spoken languages in 2050 will be Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. The key drivers behind the continued rise in popularity of these languages include population growth, economic predictions and national language policy.
As David Graddol notes in “The Future of English?”, there is no reason to believe that another language will become the global lingua franca within the next 50 years. English probably won't replace other languages, but its usefulness as the common language in trade, diplomacy, and pop culture will continue.
A 2014 study by the investment bank Natixis even predicted that French would become the world's most widely spoken language by 2050. The authors of the study referred to were demographic growth prospects in Africa. "French is also widespread in many smaller countries," Ammon said.
We currently find Urdu, Indonesian, Hindi, and Bengali among the fastest-growing languages. While some of these languages may not be among the most used today, a British Council report suggests that they will hold significant sway in the business world by 2050.
VIDEO: Punjabi is now Australia's fastest growing language
Punjabi is now more popular in Australia than it is in India, where it is only the eleventh-most spoken language. More on: Australia. Languages.
As of 2023, studies show that the ten following languages are growing the fastest: English. Portuguese. Arabic.
Of course, the world is constantly changing, and a new study has proclaimed that there will soon be a new global language on the world scene. Dr. Jeffrey Gill, a Flinders University academic, believes Chinese is set to rise shortly as a prominent global language spoken frequently outside of China and Asia.
Types of Language Change
Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across time. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays.
It's unlikely that we'll see a world that speaks one language any time soon. Protecting each individual countries' cultures is a huge barrier, but an important one to ensure our world is as beautifully diverse as it's always been.
So will Mandarin replace English as the next global language? Answer: not yet. English rose to prominence through the British Empire and as a result there are native English speakers to be found across the globe. English is the language of shared popular culture – music, film, even sport.
Not likely since most Chinese already learn English. What is likely is that learning Mandarin will become a useful language like French, Spanish, Dutch or German. Enough people speak it to make it useful and there is a China town in most cities but most of them speak English so … useful but not needed.
Esperanto is spoken internationally by an estimated 30,000 to 180,000 users. What makes Esperanto particularly intriguing is that it is a constructed language. In other words, it is a language that was specifically and artificially created.
Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, mass migration, cultural replacement, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide (language killing).
Latin language
Latin is by far the most well-known dead language. Though it has been considered a dead language for centuries, it is still taught in school as an important way to understand many languages. Latin was originally spoken by people living along the lower Tiber River.
Since 1950, the number of unique languages spoken throughout our world has steadily declined. Today, the voices of more than 7,000 languages resound across our planet every moment, but about 2,900 or 41% are endangered. At current rates, about 90% of all languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.
Japanese is another most difficult language for all those who have grown up learning English, Spanish or French but at the same time might be easy for those who are well-versed in East Asian languages.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.