[kmarc]

Not 60, but trying to somewhat predict where I will be at that time... As a non-native English speaker I used to say:

20 years ago I knew that if I wanted to have a great career today, I had to learn English. Today, if I want to have a great career 20 years from now, I should learn Chinese.

(since then I left the telco bubble, maybe other parts of the tech industry are not that Chinese-heavy)

[quonn]

People said the same 20 years ago and it‘s not going to happen for many reasons.

- The language of science remains English.

- Only a small part of the Asian countries has languages with a similar structure. Meanwhile, North and South America, Europe, Australia, Russia and India are within the Indo-Germanic language family.

- English has both simple grammar and a simple alphabet. To succeed a language also has to be easy to adopt.

- China is getting more important, but the sum of western countries also will be

[4gotunameagain]

*Indo-European

Also the language of science remains English because still the west is the most prevalent economy. As history has shown, science follows the strong economies. Let's see how that plays out, if we manage to not implode, because we sure are heading there right now.

As much as I hate American foreign policy and large parts of the culture as well, it sure as hell beats Chinese.

[kmarc]

It's quite much possibly my (previous) bubble.

> The language of science remains English.

While I agree with you, born and raised in the Eastern block, they also had their common blanket statements. Looking from the other side, they turned out to be wrong.

I'll keep an open mind, in case I'm again on some other sides.