![]() ![]() Whatever the total, he disagrees with the notion that English's growth as a second tongue means it will become the world language to the exclusion of all others. Graddol says that only recently have the second language speakers surpassed the number of native English speakers. Crystal says more than three times as many people speak it as a second language than as a first, Mr. ![]() David Graddol thinks even that momentum will die in the near future, but personally I think there is no sign of this."ĭM: David Graddol does not dispute English's expansion as a second language, but his sense of proportion differs. I don't myself see that process stopping in the immediate future. But all the evidence suggests that the English language snowball is rolling down a hill and is getting faster and faster and faster and accreting new foreign language users unlike any language has ever done before. David Crystal of the University of Wales, the author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, says about one-and-a-half-billion of the world's six-billion people speak it as a second tongue compared to the 400-million native speakers.ĬRYSTAL: "Nobody quite knows what's going to happen because no language has been in this position before. Graddol underestimates the future of its dominance. These are Bengali, Tamil, and Malay - spoken in south and southeast Asia.īut another expert on the English language says Mr. Graddol noted that three languages not now near the top of the list of the most widely spoken might be there soon. ![]() In a recent article in the journal Science, Mr. GRADDOL: "The number of people speaking English as a first language continues to rise, but it isn't rising nearly as fast as the numbers of many other languages around the world simply because the main population group has been largely in the lesser developed countries where languages other than English have been spoken." He points out that the decline will not be in total numbers of English speakers, but in relative terms. But British language scholar David Graddol says English will probably drop in dominance by the middle of this century to rank, after Chinese, about equally with Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu, a south-Asian tongue closely related to Hindi. But, as VOA Science Correspondent David McAlary reports, English will continue to remain widespread and important:ĭM: Just 10 years ago, native English speakers were second only to Chinese in number. Broadcast on Coast to Coast: March 18, 2004Įnglish is fast becoming the language of science around the world, but what is its future among everyday speakers? One expert points out that the percentage of native English speakers is declining globally while the languages of other rapidly growing regions are being spoken by increasing numbers of people. ![]()
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