Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world followed by English. This, however, needs to be interpreted with caution. Spoken language estimates include both native and secondary speakers. The former are those speaking the primary or official language of their country. The latter are the ones speaking the language in addition to another primary language.
Given its large size, China is expected to contribute substantively to native speakers in Mandarin. Estimates of spoken language prepared during the later part of the last century by Bernard Comrie and George Weber put native Chinese speakers between 836 million to 1.1 billion. Similar estimates for English were between 320-330 million. There were 150 million secondary speakers of English, compared with 20 million speaking Mandarin. Thus, of a total English speaking population of around 500 million, about a third was secondary. For Mandarin, only 2% of the total speakers were secondary.
This is how it was at the end of the last decade. How are things now?
The US Census Bureau estimates current world populations for Mandarin and English at 1.4 billion and 1.3 billion, respectively. The estimates obviously involve some double counting since there are many who speak both. Nonetheless, compared with earlier figures, the number of people speaking English has experienced an almost four-fold increase. On the other hand, the number of Mandarin speakers has increased by around 23%.
Much of the increase in the English-speaking population has ironically come from China and India. China has had a sharp increase in the number of people speaking English. At the turn of the century, less than 1% of the people in China spoke English. A study released by the British Council in 2009 pointed out that every year China is adding 20 million to its English-speaking population. This sharp increase is on account of the English language becoming a compulsory subject in primary schools in China.
There is a clear tendency of learning English?at least spoken English?in non-English-speaking parts of Asia represented by China and India. But this does not mean that English will replace Mandarin as the most widely-spoken language in future. Indeed, it is questionable whether English will remain the leading language for global communication in future.
The search for the global language should begin by identifying the ?global? community. Netizens are the best representatives of global citizens since the Internet is the most potent medium of communication in an integrated world. Statistics on Internet users reveal interesting insights on languages used on the Net. Of approximately 2 billion Internet users, 536 million use English while 445 million use Mandarin. Between them, the two languages account for almost half of total Internet users. Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese?the three other popular Net languages?have 153 million, 99 million and 83 million users, respectively.
Two trends are worth noting. First, over the last decade, the number of Internet users in Mandarin has increased by 1,162%. In comparison, the number of users in English has gone up by 281%. Thus, the growth in the number of Mandarin Internet users has been nearly four times that of English users. Second, Internet penetration among Mandarin speakers is 32% compared to 42% among English speakers. Internet penetration measures the ratio of Internet users of a particular language to the total population speaking that language. Large chunks of Mandarin speakers are yet to hook on to the Internet as the main mode of communication. But as the Internet penetrates deep and wide among Mandarin speakers, the volume of Mandarin netizens will increase exponentially.
The current trends indicate that Mandarin may well overtake English as the language of the Internet community in distant future. Ironically, China is expected to contribute to the growth of both Mandarin and English Net users. Deeper Internet penetration and emphasis on English will be responsible for the twin growth. However, the number of new Mandarin users from China is expected to be much more than new English users. India will also contribute to the growth of Net users in English as its own Internet penetration increases. To what extent this will match the growth of Mandarin speakers will be interesting to watch. But there is no doubt that no other third language appears capable of challenging the lead enjoyed by Mandarin and English. The success of English in remaining level with Mandarin depends largely on how much more of China and India start speaking English. Colonialism could not have hoped for a more virtuous response!
The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore. These are his personal views
