English is Doomed as the Global Language

That is the conclusion of Oxford linguist Nicholas Ostler. (He studied Latin and Sanskrit so what does he know?!) The author of a recent book on the rise and fall of languages throughout history, Ostler concludes that the popularity of a particular language has a lot to do with the economic fortunes at the time. The U.S. economy is doing badly and will continue to do so into the future so…

Korea’s Chosun sums up his thinking this way:

“The reasons are what he calls the “Three Rs” — ruin, relegation and resignation. Language is surprisingly easily influenced by political factors, he says, and the influence of English will weaken with the diminishing power of the world’s sole superpower, the U.S.”

And:

“The economic prowess of Anglo-Saxon countries that were behind the spread of influence of English in the last three to four centuries is falling. In emerging economies like China, Brazil and Russia, foreign investors need to learn the local language as English is not enough to communicate.”

And don’t count on the internet to spread English further. That is changing, too. “From a sociological perspective, the age of the Internet put English in a similar position to the one Latin faced when printing technology was developed. The printing press boosted demand for books in local languages and accelerated the fall of Latin. By the same token, the past decade saw an explosion of languages other than English across the web, such as Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.”

Is Ostler right? I have my doubts. There will be the consolidation of languages, but there will always be a dominant global language. If not English, what will it be? Mandarin?