Title:
How to...
Topic:
Language learning in 50 years
Author:
Lars F. Andersen
School:
Tønder Gymnasium
Level:
Less advanced
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The Bible says that languages saw the day of light when people were building the tower of Babylon that should go all the way to heaven. God being furious about this gave everybody a different language so they could not organize the building of the tower. Now, thousands of years later the nature of man has developed a language that is more dominating than others. First there was Latin, spoken from the empire of Rome, and therefore spoken by many others. Nowadays the most dominating language is English.
The big question is how we will learn languages in 50 years? Will it be necessary or even interesting at all to dig into other languages than maybe our native language and English, which is becoming the main language of communication between foreigners worldwide?
Unfortunately you can expect that less used languages will die with their cultures while globalization will encourage the prevalence of particularly English. That may actually change in the future, though, depending on who will have the economical power and strength. If for example China overtakes the USA’s wealth, Chinese may slowly begin to dominate both Internet and the financial world and spread like English has done the past decades. It will of course still be necessary for historians to be able to read and understand extinguished languages, just as our cultural heritage always will be of great interest to people with historical interests.
The Internet will for sure remain a major source of learning languages, especially English, but more ways of learning foreign languages will certainly occur. You can image a society where businessmen in succession walk around constantly with a digital player or mobile phone connected to some earphones in which a soft voice steadily repeats glossaries for a new foreign language. When a day of work is over, or even as replacement for lessons in school, you may be able to attend an online class where a teacher or professor gives live lessons while you, yourself, are still at home.
Exchange students and going to other countries and being forced to learn by hearing and doing may also get even more widespread as the world is getting smaller every minute. As time passes by the time to travel a specific number of kilometers will decrease and we will no longer have difficulties in being abroad for several months.
We will certainly take advantage of the technologies that will be developed and many alternative methods of learning languages will occur. You will no longer have to attend school to study the old-fashioned way, but we will meet more flexibility and for example learn new languages by practicing the spoken language in reality, instead of just speaking in a fictive classroom situation.
The big question is how we will learn languages in 50 years? Will it be necessary or even interesting at all to dig into other languages than maybe our native language and English, which is becoming the main language of communication between foreigners worldwide?
Unfortunately you can expect that less used languages will die with their cultures while globalization will encourage the prevalence of particularly English. That may actually change in the future, though, depending on who will have the economical power and strength. If for example China overtakes the USA’s wealth, Chinese may slowly begin to dominate both Internet and the financial world and spread like English has done the past decades. It will of course still be necessary for historians to be able to read and understand extinguished languages, just as our cultural heritage always will be of great interest to people with historical interests.
The Internet will for sure remain a major source of learning languages, especially English, but more ways of learning foreign languages will certainly occur. You can image a society where businessmen in succession walk around constantly with a digital player or mobile phone connected to some earphones in which a soft voice steadily repeats glossaries for a new foreign language. When a day of work is over, or even as replacement for lessons in school, you may be able to attend an online class where a teacher or professor gives live lessons while you, yourself, are still at home.
Exchange students and going to other countries and being forced to learn by hearing and doing may also get even more widespread as the world is getting smaller every minute. As time passes by the time to travel a specific number of kilometers will decrease and we will no longer have difficulties in being abroad for several months.
We will certainly take advantage of the technologies that will be developed and many alternative methods of learning languages will occur. You will no longer have to attend school to study the old-fashioned way, but we will meet more flexibility and for example learn new languages by practicing the spoken language in reality, instead of just speaking in a fictive classroom situation.
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