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The world faces a future of people speaking more than one language, with English no longer seen as likely to become domination, a British language expert says in a new analysis.”English is likely to remain one of the world’s most important languages for the foreseeable future, but its future is more problematic-and-complex-than most people appreciate,” said language researcher David Graddol (Schmid, pars. 1-2).
He sees English as likely to become the “first among equals” rather than having the global field to itself (par. 3). . . The share of the world’s population that speaks English as a native language is falling, Graddol reports in a paper in Friday’s issue of the journal Science (par. 5).
“There is a distinct consciousness in my countries, both developed and developing, about this dominance of English. There is some evidence of resistance to it, a desire to change it” said {Scott} Montgomery [the author of another article published in the same issue of Science]. For example, he said, in the early years of the internet it was domination by sites in English, but in recent years there has been a proliferation of non-English sites, especially Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and others (pars. 19-20).
Nonetheless, English is strong as a second language, and teaching it has become a growth industry, said Montgomery, a Seattle-Based geologist and energy consultant (par. 21).
Graddol noted, though, that employers in parts of Asia are already looking beyond English. “In the next decade the new ‘must learn’ language is likely to be Mandarin” (par. 22).