On the one hand, languages are disappearing at an amazing rate, and the number of native English speakers is actually declining.
Prominent linguist David Graddol estimates that as many as 90 percent of the world's 6,000 to 7,000 languages will go extinct this century. His learned guess is echoed by John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University.However, if people study a second language, English is the language most people try to learn, not Mandarin Chinese.
English happens to have gotten there first. It is now so deeply entrenched in print, education and media that switching to anything else would entail an enormous effort... Also, the tones of Chinese are extremely difficult to learn beyond childhood, and truly mastering the writing system virtually requires having been born to it.English has become the language of travel, of commerce, of science, and of entertainment. On balance, you find it hard to argue against.
The other DrC and I joke that 50 years from now the whole world will speak broken English. Likely a pidgin-on-steroids, perhaps like that spoken by Mal and his crew in the Firefly/Serenity 'verse. Shiny.
