This one comes courtesy of Fox News, so take it with a pinch of salt, but apparently the English language is set to be replaced by Chinese in the future.
Currently English is the 'international language of business and commerce' but, could its era of dominance on the Internet could be coming to an end?
An infographic circulating on the Internet highlights the growing prominence of Chinese users on the web, and suggest that Chinese may be the dominant language on the world wide web within five years. According to tech blog the Next Web, which created the chart, China gained an additional 36 million Internet users last year taking the country to a total of 440 million users over all whilst there are a total of 536 million English speaking users online.
But don't worry lovers of the English language Fox News (In a rare moment of common sense) reassures us that-
“This is clearly based on raw numbers and the size of China’s Internet population and sheer users won’t be enough to usurp the cultural significance of English.”
David Graddol, a British applied linguist and broadcaster on the other hand who has been researching issues relating to global English for over a decade says that the Internet landscape could soon be founded on another language.
He says that “In 50 years it may be different and everyone may be talking Chinese (Mandarin) as a second language — as the world does with English now.
I’d better start learning my mandarin phrases then hadn’t I
Source: Foxnews