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English, French or Chinese?

Infinite Chaos

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44% of French speakers around the world live in Africa and now in English speaking African countries there is a growth of French as a 2nd language. France's relationship with former colonies has been markedly different from other former colonial powers.

On the other hand, China has become the largest investor / creditor in Africa and this could influence the outlook and most common language spoken. As the international language of business, English will be hard to replace but one study suggests that 85% of French speakers in the world will live in Africa.

Interesting times ahead for the continent.
 
Doubt it will change much tbh.

Look at the former colonies... still dominated in large part by the coloniser languages. Even in highly nationalistic India, where English was forced on the population over centuries, the traditional languages still dominate.

Now will Chinese replace English as the main trade language.. maybe over a century, but not any time soon.. but it could happen. Remember once Latin was the language of politics and trade, then it became Spanish and now it is English. But it took centuries for it to change and yet Spanish is still spoken by more than English. Now Latin has all but died out, but that kinda took 1000 years.
 
Very doubtful that Chinese will ever become an international language.

People simply do not want to memorize thousands of characters.
 
Don't forget Arabic as an African lingua Franca.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
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