Question: Languages are tricky and some are easier than others to learn, in the next 50 years what are your predictions for the top languages around the world?

Nadine Lavan answered on 9 Jan 2018:

I think what the top languages in the world will be may not have that much to do with how easy or hard these languages are to learn. One important factor could be the number of speakers: no matter how easy a language may be to learn, if there are only 50 people speaking it, it’ll be hard to make the rest of the population tag along and see the point of learning the language if they have no one to properly communicate with immediately. Another factor is probably politics/policy making: currently most people learn some level of English at school: Imagine what would happen if no one in the world would study English at school anymore (apart from English speaking countries, of course!)…And then there are fashions: I know some people who love anime to have studied Japanese to read more while they also got intrigued by the culture. And that’s only some of the factors, I’m sure there’s plenty more!