[zmguy]

While I do want defragmentation of technical and scientific research (imagine the duplication that occurs given that lack of a unified scientific research dependency tree), I specifically qualified myself with "...as a second language." A world where everyone speaks one language would be boring as fuck, not to mention probably a dozen generations in the future before it would happen. But realistically the future global language of Earth is probably going to be Arabic, Arabic speakers are reproducing at a rate that virtually guarantees it. I can't remember to attribute this quote/sentiment accurately but here it goes... "The war against the West will not be won on a battlefield but in the wombs of our mothers..." I also can't speak to the accuracy of the claims in the following link, but they are thought provoking and worth a watch/read. http://religionresearch.org/martijn/2009/05/05/islamizing-eu...

[Crito]

> "A world where everyone speaks one language would be boring as fuck"

Diversity is great, but a world in which everyone can fluently converse with everyone else would be the exact opposite of boring. In fact, I would say that this sort of universal communication would be great because diversity is great; it would allow all of those different cultures to share their cultures with others, with greater ease.

Of course the best of both worlds is a world where everyone is multilingual, with everyone sharing at least one language with every other person. I think this is more likely than a world in which Arabic is the universal language. I think that the increasing coverage and accuracy of machine translation will create a synthetic/"soft" version of the universally multilingual scenario. Right now machine translation is still fairly shit (although still serviceable!), but I don't think that will be the case in 50 years.

[kreeben]

I would love a world where most people can communicate with everybody regardless of "native" tongue and that would prolly lead to a new golden era of mankind in creative and humanitarian areas. Not so much in science I suppose. They already talk to each other fine. The trend certainly seems to be english taking over. Which is fine since it is such an expressive language beatutiful in ways. All other major langs will probably remain and you guys will look kind of silly only knowing the "global" language but in time latin american culture will catch up with you and spanish and potrugeese will be your second lanugages. Maby they already are?

[entropy_]

As a native Arabic speaker, I think you're incredibly wrong about Arabic ever becoming a dominant language world-wide. There are several reasons for this.

First, Arabic itself is an incredibly fragmented language. Almost every country or region that speaks it has its own colloquial version of it which may or may not be mutually intelligible. As a Lebanese person I can understand Syrians fairly easily, Jordanians with a bit of straining and the other person speaking slightly slower than usual, Egyptians with a lot of straining and speaking slowly and Saudis not at all. Theoretically, we could communicate using the formal(written) Arabic, but most people, especially newer generations, tend to suck at that as it's a much more difficult language that's learned only in the context of school and pretty much almost never used outside, at least in Lebanon, that is. The colloquial languages are to the formal Arabic as French/Spanish/Italian are to Latin, basically.

Second, all good universities I know of in the region teach in English or French rather than Arabic. Though the trend is tipping towards English of late. This is because most of the region was put either under British or French mandate after the Ottomans were ousted during WW1. This was detrimental in many ways which I won't go into, but one of the good things that came out of it was that they established many schools and universities. In fact, most of the good ones I know were founded by French, British or American missionaries during that period.

Third, well, the internet(and media in general), English is the dominant language in media most people consume. I learned English from watching cartoons as kid. I've almost never stepped foot in an English speaking country(except for a couple of weeks in the U.S. 2 years ago) and yet I can speak, and write, with almost native proficiency.

[nayefc]

While I agree to what you're saying, the use of Arabic is not disappearing in the rest of the Arab world as in parts of Lebanon. Some Lebanese see themselves as "non-Arabs", when Lebanese are nothing but Arabs. Those who are in an identity struggle are using French and English mostly, and can't speak Arabic well. I have Lebanese relatives, and some words they say in Arabic are really heavy Arabic words that even we don't use. They still avoid saying that it is indeed, Arabic.

I am Palestinian-Jordanian and I do understand almost all slang accents fairly well. The only one I have trouble with is the Moroccan/Algerian. I understand it as long as they do not inject French or Berber words and speak slowly.

The levant accents are extremely similar that the gulf cannot really differentiate between Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Palestinian (although we see them as distinct and can pick up which accent is spoken from just a word or two). The same phenomenon is seen in the gulf. Iraq is pretty distinct, yet closer to the gulf. Everyone understands Egypt as it is pretty close to Standard Arabic (just like the Levant), although its quirks have become known through songs, movies and shows which are dominated by Egyptians.

As for Standard (or Classical) Arabic, everyone in Jordan (or most of the Arab world) who went through some sort of schooling can speak it, and understand it perfectly. The news, newspapers and any formal event is given in proper Arabic. All Arabic literature, books, and writings are also in Standard Arabic.

My point is, while I agree with you that the use of Arabic is degrading, I doubt it will ever be overtaken by French or English (depending on where you live). English and French are being seen as a symbol of being educated, and those who are uneducated try to speak English or French (albeit terribly). Some who like to show off, or have some sort of identity struggle, rely heavily on French or English. Outside of these insecurities, Arabic is pretty much always in use.

[entropy_]

I agree with you on all of the points you listed. However, while all Arabs can understand the formal Arabic perfectly, many struggle to write it or express themselves in it, and that is not just a case of identity crisis.

I consider myself an Arab -- whether I'm proud of that is another issue, but there is not identity crisis. I can understand the news, read the newspaper, official documents, etc, etc, but I would not even dream of replying to a comment in Arabic as I can so easily do in English, and not just because I can't touch-type it, but because I would fail at expressing even simple ideas without a lot of struggling, trying to remember words that differ from the colloquial or(and especially) proper grammar.

While the case of Lebanese people is a bit extreme in this regard, all Arabs are slowly following suit in this regard.

You see, I was not saying that Arabic is so far gone now that nobody uses it, or even that not everybody in the Arab world uses it, that was not the point. I was only commenting on a trend. The parent poster suggested that Arabic was on a course to become dominant worldwide and I find that a laughable idea given the current state of it and its trend(slowly) into oblivion to be replaced by many colloquial languages that simplify the grammar and incorporate foreign languages into it the way this happened with Latin.

[nayefc]

Yes, I mostly agree with this.

[kiviuq]

That's so true, I grew up speaking only Darija (Moroccan) and I have a hell of a problem understanding Arabs from the East. It's nearly impossible.

[danial]

I don't know if the claims on the birth rates amongst Muslims is true, but even if they are, are you sure you're not talking about birth rates amongst Muslims and Muslim-majority countries as opposed to Arabic speakers?

An overwhelming majority of the Muslims are not Arab and do not speak Arabic [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world#Countries_with_the...

[throwaway344]

I'm curious why you think that Arabic is so predestined to be "the" language of the future. I'm saying that, as the number of people who speak English (840 million) is four times as many as the number who speak Arabic (221 million). That's not even including the lack of mutual intelligibility between different flavors of Arabic.

[justinmk]

Because s/he is extrapolating a curve based on the current birth rate.

> Arabic speakers are reproducing at a rate that virtually guarantees it.

That's ridiculous. In the 1970s, Chinese birth rate was ~5/woman [1]. It turns out that dynamic systems change with time.

Anyways, to get back on topic: more accessibility will only improve things.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

[unhammer]

Some other HN comment I can't remember mentioned this: A logistic curve looks a lot like an exponential curve if you can only see the "start" of it ;-)

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

"They're outbreeding us!" has been a recurring fear among first world whites for a long time now, c.f. all that "Club of Rome" stuff from the 70s.

[zmguy]

I don't think it is something to fear if it is true. It's just a trend that is talked about. I don't personally care what demographics make up the future population.

[shakethemonkey]

Quite the opposite is happening in the long term throughout the Arab World and neighboring regions. As we speak, Iran (speaks Farsi) is presently at fertility rates below the rate of replenishment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-a-demo...

See figure 6 here:

http://www.aei.org/files/2012/03/21/-fertility-decline-in-th...

[ama729]

Considering most of the world use a left to right latin script, I don't see how arabic would spread more effectively than English.

[NAFV_P]

> Considering most of the world use a left to right latin script, I don't see how arabic would spread more effectively than English.

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[alco]

Is that fifty-one or fifteen?

[NAFV_P]

Fifteen.

[nnq]

Population dynamics have nothing to do with the dynamics of memes. People are just vehicles for knowledge and ideas. Just because they receive some knowledge and ideas soon after birth, it doesn't mean they have to keep them. Just like they don't have to keep their religion or their "default" sexual orientation.

The people that will control what ideas win will be the ones controlling the media, social networks and communication channels. It doesn't matter if they are just 0.1% of the general population, their ideas will mater more than the ones of the 99.9%. And considering the kinds of ideas that float in the minds of some people, like the "the war against the West will not be won on a battlefield but in the wombs of our mothers" aberration (why do people even think of "war", there is no war, just a peaceful competition among ideas that float from one mind to another, there simply is nothing to fight for, ain't this obvious to all?!), I prefer this situation!