What will the role of other languages be now that English is globally dominant?

[u/Xotngoos335]

English has become the language of business, education, science, medicine, and the internet. If you want to participate in any of these things, you have to be at least intermediate in English. With this language dominating so many major aspects of life, what will happen to every other language?

Obviously the other languages are not going to disappear and people will still speak—and learn—them to gain access to cultural experiences, but I wonder how much they're going to be able to compete against English. Think of the following scenario: you're a singer and want to write a song. If you write it in your native language, only speakers of your language will really be exposed to it. If you write it in English, the whole world can listen to it, and that means more recognition and more money. You might say that money doesn't always matter, but for some people it will; so if publishing in English can increase your profit margins, for some people that's going to be a no brainer. End result is English media grows, non-English media shrinks.

You really have to wonder what's going to happen...

[u/RedditReddy]

Interesting, but it's not true that if you sing a song in English, the whole world will listen to it. Lots of people around the world. Don't listen to English music, but prefer listening to music and their own or another language. And even if they do listen to English music, many won't understand it. So there are still many good reasons for singers to write and sing songs in languages other than in English.

[u/anoulityon]

Artists build their popularity on domestic audience, so they write their songs with people who speak their language in mind. Most of them are already content with that.

The few ones who have more ambition might try their hand writing in English, but they also risk losing their flair and be seen as sell outs. They might lose their original fanbase in the process while achieving nothing in international stage.

It will always be better if artists will stay true to their origins. For example, K-pop has been massively popular in Asia since late 2000s and entire 2010s, non-Korean Asians loved them despite the language barrier.

Language is an important element in songs, but it's not everything. If it's catchy or has good melody, people will love it regardless.

[u/WyrobWedliniarski]

Latin was once also such a language. Not much happened to other languages apart from borrowing some words.

[u/Jazzlike-Boot9798]

¿Cómo que si quieres participar en negocios, educación, ciencia, medicina e internet tienes que tener un nivel al menos intermedio de inglés?

Hay muchas sociedades con negocios, educación, ciencia, medicina e internet en la que la inmensa mayoría de los usuarios no tiene ni un nivel A1 de inglés.

Más aún, cada vez necesitamos menos entender el idioma del otro para interactuar en internet, por ejemplo.

[u/LaoBa]

In my country, the Netherlands, the percentage of songs recorded by Dutch artists in Dutch as opposed to English has been steadily rising for the last two decades.     Also note that countries like the US have very little interest in songs or books in English produced by Dutch artists and authors.

[u/vyyne]

It will be interesting to see if Chinese can gain this kind of dominance or anything approaching it. Might be tough even if they dominate heavily in many areas.

[u/dondegroovily → u/vyyne]

A lot of language dominance come from dominating in the arts. The USA created jazz, rock, rap, swing dancing, breaking, krump, vogueing, and a very long list of other things. And all of these made by minority groups

China's heavy censorship and oppression of minority groups ensures that this kind of thing won't happen there, and therefore Chinese is unlikely to achieve that kind of dominance any time soon