Maybe, but Mandarin / Chinese isn’t really used outside China. English has about 1.5 billion speakers, and over 1 billion of them speak it as a second language. Chinese has 1.1 billion speakers, but only 200 million speak it as a second language. It seems like the international langua franca is English.
Policies could change, and China could try to teach people Mandarin as part of the Belt and Roads initiative. But, right now, if you’re trying to do business in other countries or with foreigners in your country, English is the most useful language to know.
That’s not to say that future-English will necessarily be too similar to current English. I’m sure the more it spreads, the more it will change.
It’ll be an English-Mandarin Chinese pidgin, like in Firefly.
Maybe, but Mandarin / Chinese isn’t really used outside China. English has about 1.5 billion speakers, and over 1 billion of them speak it as a second language. Chinese has 1.1 billion speakers, but only 200 million speak it as a second language. It seems like the international langua franca is English.
Policies could change, and China could try to teach people Mandarin as part of the Belt and Roads initiative. But, right now, if you’re trying to do business in other countries or with foreigners in your country, English is the most useful language to know.
That’s not to say that future-English will necessarily be too similar to current English. I’m sure the more it spreads, the more it will change.
My personal favourite is the term lingua franca itself from when everyone (important) spoke French.
As in English is the lingua franca.
Latin for (roughly) English is the French.