2009/8/23 Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires.
The only language that has become a world lingua franca to date is English, and although British colonialism was clearly the original reason for this, the dominant form of English over much of the world now is American English. The U.S. has never had a vast colonial empire, so surely the supremacy of U.S. English owes more to the economic and cultural dominance of the U.S. than any other factor. If, in the future, China becomes the dominant economic power in the world, then I don't think there's any doubt that Chinese will supplant English as the most widely used language in business and many other domains.
Chinese has a very large speaker population but the number of speakers outside of the Han ethnic group and/or the PRC is negligible. Almost all non-Han speakers of Chinese are ethnic minorities in the PRC, virtually all Chinese speaking people outside of the PRC are ethnic Chinese.
The numbers are small compared to English, but they're growing, and the Chinese government has made an effort to promote the spread of Chinese. A lot of people outside China are learning Chinese, though probably only a small proportion become proficient in it.
What could the motivations be for an aspiring professional in for example Congo be to learn Chinese? There are few and almost all of them are related to business dealings with China.
Another motivating factor could be to work for Chinese companies in Congo - maybe not likely now, but Chinese companies are becoming increasingly involved in African countries, and this may be more likely in the future if those companies get a more favourable reputation. Tourism is a further possible reason, though I doubt many Chinese tourists visit Central Africa just yet.
Hindi is in a similar position - it has quite a large number of
diaspora speakers, but outside of a single country and/or national origin, it has virtually no reach.
Hindi in a completely different situation since, apart from having fewer native speakers, it hasn't become the dominant language throughout the main country in which it is spoken, and AFAIK it isn't widely learnt as a second language in other countries. This could change in the future, though.
The main thing that could stop Chinese becoming a global lingua franca is the development of translation technology, which is advancing rapidly. Still, I think most of the arguments against it are based on misconceptions about why English is currently the dominant language, and often-antiquated stereotypes of China.
Richard