- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Mr Graddol, who is managing director of a language consultancy
called the English Company, based in Milton Keynes, suggests that while
English "will indeed play a crucial role in shaping the new world
linguistic order", its main effect will be to create new generations
of people who speak two or more languages - one of which is likely to be
English.
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- Neil Gilroy-Scott, the director of education at the English-Speaking
Union, which promotes the use of English worldwide, said: "We would
broadly agree with these conclusions. The implication is that we should
really spend more time in this country learning other languages, and stop
being a monolingual society."
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- Mr Gilroy-Scott added that English had become the bedrock
of many global activities, including computing, science and air traffic
control.
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- However, Mr Graddol noted that in each of those disciplines
the language being used was a specialised slice of English. He also pointed
out that in computing, companies such as Microsoft and Intel were hiring
researchers in China who were publishing research papers in Chinese, to
make them harder for rivals to understand. And air traffic control accidents
are sometimes caused by native English speakers who fail to use the formal
language of air travel.
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- Mr Graddol noted: "Employers in parts of Asia are
already looking beyond English - in the next decade, the new 'must-learn'
language [there] is likely to be Mandarin [Chinese]."
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- A wider change will be in the part that languages play
in the daily lives of people. "Paradoxically, cities of the future
will allow immigrant languages to survive," Mr Graddol said, since
ethnic groups will be able to stay in touch with a linguistic and cultural
base through television, telephone and the internet.
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- However he predicted that 90 per cent of the 6,000 languages
in existence today could disappear through lack of use over the next century.
"We may now be losing a language every day," said Mr Graddol.
But, he added, as older, rural languages were lost, new urban hybrids could
replace them. "Cities are places where languages mingle and where
language change speeds up," he said.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=495505
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