Interesting AP Article in the Philly Inquirer:
English won't reign, researcher predicts
The world faces a future of people speaking more than one language, with English no longer seen as likely to become dominant, a British language expert says in a new analysis.
"English is likely to remain one of the world's most important languages for the foreseeable future, but its future is more problematic - and complex - than most people appreciate," researcher David Graddol said.
He sees English as likely to become the "first among equals" rather than having the global field to itself.
"Monolingual speakers of any variety of English - American or British - will experience increasing difficulty in employment and political life," he said, "and are likely to become bewildered by many aspects of society and culture around them."
The share of the world's population that speaks English as a native language is falling, Graddol reported in a paper in the latest issue of the journal Science.
The idea of English becoming the world language to the exclusion of others "is past its sell-by date," Graddol said. Instead, its major contribution will be in creating new generations of bilingual and multilingual speakers, he said.
As of 1995, he reported, English was the world's second-most-common native tongue, after Chinese. By 2050, he said, Chinese will remain predominant, with Hindi-Urdu of India and Arabic climbing past English among people 15 to 24, and Spanish nearly equal to it.
And so... how does that impact national, state and local emphasis on education of other languages? Does this change the priorities, short-term or long-term?