English – Official Lingua Franca?

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0412/10.futureOfEnglish.html


Friday December 10, 2004
Pre-Intermediate +

BNE: Is English the world’s Lingua Franca? A report from the British Council announced yesterday estimated that by 2015 two billion people will start learning English around the world, and three billion people – half the planet – will be speaking it. However, report editor, David Graddoll, said that English will not become the Esperanto and dominate global language learning as Arabic, Chinese and Spanish are set to rise in importance. He said the trend is towards “linguistic globalization” and multi-lingualism, not bilingualism, and definitely not monolingualism. French, on the other hand, once considered a lingua franca, will see its status as a world language continue to slide.

Although English will escalate in popularity, English language teachers will likely be out of a job by 2050, when so many people will be able to speak English, that teaching it will become almost redundant. Demand for English teaching will drop by a whopping 75%, from two billion to 500 million. Instead English will be taught worldwide at elementary level, and many universities across the world will choose to teach in English. This suggests a wake-up call for traditionally lazy and monolingual Britons, who tend to shun language learning because of their “everyone speaks English” mentality. Brits will be left behind in a future poly-lingual world.

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