How Long Before There is One Dominant Language?

Shortly after Al Gore invented the “information highway” regular people started to find ways to use it. The internet or “world wide web” became a frequent subject of conjecture with people making all sorts of predictions as to it’s potential influence, both good and evil. But notice that recently we don’t seem to hear much about it anymore, at least in general terms. Instead of discussions about “The Net” and how revolutionary it is, news articles now focus on specific uses of the internet, especially the grass-roots uses such as blogs.

More and more people are discovering the experience of publishing their thoughts and ideas to the world – for free! Even when you don’t know if anyone is listening, there is something strangely compelling about publishing your ideas in an open forum. If you’ve never seen your name in a newspaper, it’s like exposing a part of yourself to strangers around the globe.

Picture a housewife named Grace peering out her sitting room window onto a snow covered field. Nothing is moving outside, the only sound comes from the wind whispering through the trees. She smiles as she turns around, sits down at her computer and starts writing down her thoughts on this cold March morning. When Grace is finished with her half-page, she hits publish and ten seconds later the entire world can read what it feels like to be a widow on a farm in North Dakota.

To see life through Grace’s eyes you don’t have to buy a book, or make a trip to the library or buy a subscription to a writer’s anthology magazine; you just have to discover it online. If Grace is persistent, and publishes a little bit of her soul every week, and if her story is engaging, then people will eventually find it. Someone will stumble upon Grace’s lonely story and e-mail his friend. That friend may post the link on her own blog or website. It may take six months or a year, but those voices that are worth hearing will be heard.

All of a sudden, anyone like Grace with the knack for expressing ideas and emotions that cause people to take notice can be a published writer. Everyone has an inner voice, and now that voice can be heard around the world. As much as the publishing industry is starting to lose sleep about all this, so is the movie industry. When a movie like “Tarnation” that cost a few hundred dollars to create can get rave reviews at Sundance and Cannes, it does not bode well for those who feel they need to spend $100 million to create a work of art. This technological empowerment will change the world faster than anyone can imagine, and it will force cultural change that countries will be powerless to stop.

Right now, Mandarin Chinese is a first language for about 14% of the world’s population, followed by Hindi at 6% and English at 5% (ref: Wiki). Because of the extensive reach of the British Empire, and more recently the economic influence of the U.S. economy, English is by far the most learned second language. As internet access gets cheaper to the point where it is essentially free, and works it’s way into the farthest reaches of the globe, how long will it take for one language to totally dominate around the world?

What language will that be?