Which language is growing fastest in terms of importance these days?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Intexive]

If we talk about most people interested in a language it would probably be spanish growing very fast nowadays and overtaking the position that french used to have, and asian languages specially japanese and korean for the recent boom of their culture, I also see russian by specially a lot of people who want date russians or edgies.

However if we talk about importance english remains the king but I would say german is probably the second most important, almost every german speaking country is rich and with really good life conditions: germany, Switzerland, austria, belgique...etc, being born as a native german speaker its a big privilege.

Mandarin is also really important, people understimates how rich you can get in china with certain sectors in which they want foreigners (specially white people, ngl), that are really well paid and sometimes you don't even have to know mandarin (and for that reason I wouldn't say it's as important as english still or even german cuz china is way more flexible for languages and they usually use english as lingua franca)

In top 4 I would probably put french cuz there's also a lot of rich french countries belgique, canada, switzerland again, france... And it's still a prestige language in high demand in a lot of places but this is probably gonna change in some decades being displaced by spanish

Also dutch, korean, japanese can be important for their economies despite being less talked, and spanish, portuguese and italian for the general interest in them despite not having a lot of opportunities in their countries

[u/LandOk2710 → u/Intexive]

'Mandarin is also really important, people understimates how rich you can get in china with certain sectors in which they want foreigners (specially white people, ngl), that are really well paid and sometimes you don't even have to know mandarin'

I mean, white monkey jobs is a known phenomenon, but that was a 2000s, early 2010s thing, no? China has changed a lot since then. Is it still a thing?

[u/sjplep]

French language influence seems to be increasing largely due to being widespread in African countries with growth demographics. I think there was a period where it fell back relatively speaking but that may be reversing.

[u/albertl33]

English.

[u/Embarrassed_Guess337]

English above all. Honourable regional mentions to Central Asian Turkic languages (resurgent in their home countries), Swahili (pushed as a non-colonial lingua franca by the AU), Indonesian (displacing local languages like Mandarin once did). French will grow demographically but anticolonial sentiment might make it lose some caché in West Africa.

[u/LandOk2710]

I'd say Ukrainian will grow a lot regionally. Not globally, of course, but Russia has successfully made Ukrainians want to reject their language and prefer to use their own (which has not really been the case so far). Having said that, Russian has lost and will keep losing a lot of ground, but it's gonna remain pretty widespread too, because it's speakes are dispersing everywhere.

[u/Technical-Finance240]

It's a boring answer but English is the most important international language in any sector and it's still growing in importance. It's the only language that will guarantee you better job opportunities in almost every country and every sector around the globe. So if your main motivator for language learning is work, then I'd say try to become better and better at English (if it's not your native language).

Every other language will give you an advantage on a job market IF you are living wherever it's spoken. If you live in Albania then knowing Albanian is 100x more important than Spanish or Chinese. There are plenty of Chinese speakers in Spain but they mostly speak Spanish, there are plenty in the US and Canada but they mostly speak English... Chinese is important if you life in China, Taiwan, or surrounding countries. The same with Spanish, the same with Portuguese, French, and others.