The future of English

English as she was spoke


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As long as the USA remains as superpower, the English language will remain as lingua franca of the World. That is why, it does not matter what other non-native English speaking countries decide to speak. Moreover, today's World is highly interconnected plus the globalization factor as never has seen humanity before. Hence, making comparisons with the ancient World is not accurate.

Michael Dunne


Agree that Ostler wrote a great, unique book with Empire of the Mind. I liked the explanation for the different trajectories of different languages. Probably gave the most compelling reason why Arabic assumed such a strong position in a part of the world (middle east, Med) with ancient cultures that previously fended off displacement.

Also quite an unqiue discussion of the Indian subcontinent languages.

At the time, I also read a history of the alphabet that was also pretty good (I think it came from a series of essays written by a Canadian on each letter in the alphabet).

Reluctant Polluter


"Poorly written, often grammatically incorrect English, yes, with left-over unrecognized words and the occasionally mangled meaning, but good enough for casual use."

It's good enough only because you know English and are able to (mentally) correct the mangled meaning and to restore left-overs of the unrecognized words. And that is how you "follow (and occasionally post to) websites and online forums in French, a language [you] do not know - thanks for the lingua-franca, to wit, English, you do know.

Computer, whatever it does, is just a tool. Like a pad and a pencil, though more sophisticated. It's useless without knowledge in your head.




"Computers will NEVER be good at translating one language into any other. Man is not capable of programming them to do that. It is like hunting for the holy grail, and like fuzzy logic. A useless waste of time"

I wouldn't be so sure. My son and some friends have been traveling for almost 3 months. They took the trans Siberian from St. Petersburg, through Russia, through Mongolia, into China, Vietnam, Cambodia and are now in Thailand. He has an iphone with an application that gives basic, but quite good translations from one language into another and this has been very useful in their travels. They at least have been able to communicate with people they would never have been able to interact with otherwise.

With the very quick progress in the field, I would not be surprised if something really advanced will be available soon.

rafael tavares

@F1scalHawk: "I’m worried by the increasing number of technical books written in Chinese."

I have talked to a Chinese language teacher. She reckoned the Chinese language is very easy to master and gave me reasons that made sense. What about English then for a non-native point of view?

Yes, you have those long words (but they're not very popular). In fact it's all about a lot of short words relying on subtle vowel distinctions - sometimes long and short (and even pitch-changing). Have you ever realised that? No pronunciation rules - which makes words very similar to ideograms. Never seen that word before, check the phonetic pinyin for the right pronunciation.
As a foreigner, I reckon English closer to Chinese than you imagine. Now, you look in the mirror and don't startle if your eyes are getting slant.
Which does not mean the use of English will be superseded. Plenty of reasons presented in the comments. Don't worry. English is ok.


We have to remember that more than 50% of English words come from Latin, directly or through French. And the scientific world is full of Greek words. That makes Latin and Greek the most successful languages in the Western World. Since this article is about a hard to predict future, I can also image that, with the use of the technology, Latin or Greek make it back as the "Lingua Franca". They are certainly more precise and elegant than any other Western language [as far as I know]. On the other hand we need to remind ourselves that "Future is not what used to be".



Point is, no matter how strongly rooted English has become in terms of being the dominant language in the West, if you put a Bolivian and a Brazilian together in the same room, their comunication will hardly be in English. Same applies for many other regions around the world. That's the true meaning of "lingua franca" it's a "bridge language" which allows people to comunicate using lexicon and grammar from several different languages. "Portuñol", "Spanglish", etc. those are the true lingua francas. Remember that Latin in Medieval Times was the language of prestige, but out there on the streets no one truly spoke it, people spoke "pidgins" or "linguas francas" who were a mixture of say some german language, plus some vulgar latin, some celtic, arabic, etc which they used to communicate amongst themselves and to their neighbours, this in turn originated all the modern languages in the West . So no matter how far English goes as the language spoken in international conferences and so on and so forth, and especially with all the technology made available, it will be practically impossible to have it dominating any part of the World, apart from the nations where it is already spoken (UK, US, Australia, bla bla).

This said, and I've said it before, its status as the language of communication in Europe will remain undisputed. In my experience, even Italians and Portuguese tend to communicate in English these days, when, with a bit of an effort, they could probably get by in some kind of "Portitaliano"

Carl J Tornell


Odd. If you have ever had the terrible experience of lecturing or making a speech through interpreters, you will understand the importance of the speaking of common language. This can simply never be replaced with any artificial tool. Mr Ostler's hypothesis does just not make sense.


cr williams, the "Arabic" numerals are actually Hindi, transmitted to Arabs via Persian. I could show you the derivation if not limited by the Economist's technology and regulations.

There is a point that has not been made, but touched on tangentially. Latin persisted for centuries beyond the fall of Rome and the disappearance of a native speaking base. I would like to suggest a set of reasons for this, that could very well apply to English.

Medical "English" is heavy with latin [as is the English used in the biological sciences]. This is so because the knowledge base in medicine grew out of a body of work [most commonly referencing Galen] in Latin.

The medical profession is a conservative one, and has conserved Latin, and blended it with English. Medical students from most countries must study this English-Latin hybrid because of the vast body of necessary knowledge. As doctors they will continue to conserve and propagate the knowledge and the language.

Not to overburden readers, the legal jargon is a similar [though not as universal] Latin-English hybrid. Similar, too, Lawyers are a conservative group.

Finally, Latin survived because it was adopted and promoted by the most conservative of all classes, the priestly class. I leave it to you to figure out where this train of thought leads.

Happy/Merry Chriskwanzaka to all.


@bliter wrote:
"and VISTA...a technological nightmare!!"

Do not blame cheap snake in your pocket on Vista.
Vista is an OS, which requires and runs perfectly on powerful computer. If you have S-grade one (and S does not stand for "super" - believe me), do not expect miracles.

Prof M H Settelen

The new Canadian great-grand-child of The Queen, should have
of course, been born in the Lt Governor's Mansion in Quebec City.
This would have happened, had the parents been made joint Governors-General of Canada, as had been recommended by this writer, to @ least two Canadian Privy Councillors last Spring.
Boy oh boy, have we missed an extremely exciting opportunity*
to have our own Royal, right here in Rideau Hall!
Having missed the Christmas-New Year address of our new Vice Regal personage; which by all accounts most Canadians also did, this may point the way to having our own Royal later on
in Rideau Hall!
Max Hugh Settelen
Merrickville, Ontario
fmr life-time ADC to the Duke of Hamilton & Brandon
*Talleyrand would not have missed it.


Changing universal translation in science fiction into science fact

-- 'In a boardroom of a major company in Europe, five people enter. Each speaks a different language and they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to understand each other. Cameras on the wall recognize each person and track where they sit. Then, individualized audio translations of what others are saying are beamed to them without wires or headsets so that only they can hear.

In situations like these and many others, technology developed at the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies is changing lives. InterACT is a partnership between Carnegie Mellon and several international universities. Under the direction of Alex Waibel, professor in CMU’s Language Technologies Institute, it’s developing software that translates, in real time, spoken English, Spanish, German and Japanese.

The progress being made toward a Star Trek-style “universal translator” is the product of years of work dating back to the early 1990s, when interACT created its first speech translation device. Instead of trying to train computers to learn the rules and idiosyncrasies of various languages, interACT uses statistical analysis.

The most difficult arena to translate, so far, has been that bane of many people’s existence—the meeting. “Meetings and phone conversations are particularly nasty because they are particularly disfluent,” Waibel says. People interrupt each other, for example. “The whole vision we’re trying to realize is building a conference room where we could all sit in our respective chairs, talk in our respective languages, and hear our respective languages,” Waibel says. “My life’s dream is to realize that. With targeted audio and simultaneous translation capability you can feel that this would be possible.”

In the end, says Waibel, the goal is to create flexible technology that’s adaptable to local situations. “We can’t possibly, in the lab, adapt it for every language or dialect situation; things will always have to be done locally,” he says. “We need to build technology that is simple enough to be maintained by people themselves, so that someone in the field can put a word into the system themselves.

Waibel notes that he’s not trying to replace human translators; they’re particularly useful in diplomatic situations, where they can provide context and calm people down. Instead, he’s interested in helping in situations where the choice isn’t between human and machine translation—it’s a question of using a machine or getting no communication at all. “The older I get, the more helping people becomes important to me,” Waibel says. “It’s less about having the latest widget and more about actually touching people’s lives.” '

Brian Barker

In reply to voices_off I can only reply that Esperanto is still a young language.

Even the first Director General Lord Reith banned the use of the word "Esperanto" in a directive to BBC employees.

Please do not discriminate against Esperanto. The study course is now receiving 120,000 hits per month.

That can't be bad :)


I came across reviews of this book some time ago and it reminded me of articles I read from over 20 years ago on the very same topic. What seems to be different here is the conclusion that technology will be the key.

Computer translation technology is making progress but has yet to get to that level of nuance that written or spoken communication in a language has and it may never do.

Many educational systems are invested in English as a second language and in many cultures it is considered a mark of a good education.
As always with changes in the lingua franca it is down to economics and trade. With China and emerging powers like India and Brazil embracing English the language is in very rude health.

As for those who see Esperanto as a solution, in its 100 years it has barely amassed more than a few million speakers worldwide. Language is more than words and grammar. It brings its own culture, for better or for worse, and a means of individual expression. It also allows a speaker to belong to a group in a way that Esperanto cannot do.


@Damianos1 wrote: Dec 30th 2010 3:45 GMT

I do agree that American popular culture, business and technical dominance, especially after WW2, has contributed substantially to making English the lingua franca today.
However, the fact that Britain had an Empire that was spread around the globe must also be a major reason why the English language is so predominant.”

That too, I agree & thanx for pointing out.


Mary J made an assumption by including every citizen of US, UK, Australia, etc (countries that have English as their official language) as a native English speaker. But she also did not include countries such as India where, indeed, millions speak English as their first language.

Predicting the demise of English seems a little fantastic given its growing popularity over the last few decades. In fact, globalization with its lingua franca as English, has been and continues to be a danger to several indigenous languages that are dying. Some might argue that is the issue which should cause us worry, if we need to worry about dying languages at all.


I think I might have just yawned my way through this article/book review - it's a cute history book on languages, nothing more.

Any second year linguist can tell you that the dividing line between languages is relatively arbitrary and highly political (there are more differences between some Chinese dialects than there are between Italian and Spanish, for instance). For political purposes/reasons, the "future lingua franca" may very well be refered to as English, but would most likely bear as much resemblance to Modern English as Middle English (this prior to what Shakespeare spoke, and highly unintelligible to modern speakers of any English - both in lexicon and in grammatical structure).

I believe you'd get a bit more worth on this topic by reading a book on language birth than language death.



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