View Content #17882

From http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=59488

French 3.0: The Next Generation
June 20, 2014

Since Language Magazine’s last report on the ongoing, public debate over the importance of French (“French on the Menu,” March 2014), the prediction that French may be the world’s most-spoken language by 2050 (based on research by Natixis, an investment bank) has spurred media reports across the world challenging the suggestion.

The prediction that French will be spoken by 750 million people by 2050 is based on the fact that French-speaking populations are growing faster than English- and Mandarin-speaking ones.

…Whether or not it overtakes Chinese, English, or Spanish in sheer numbers of speakers, we can be sure that French will be a major language of this century’s youth, and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) is focusing on youth to make the most of this opportunity.

To reinforce this priority, the OIF secretary general, Abdou Diouf, created the World Forum of French Language, which was first held in Québec in 2012. The second Forum is slated to take place in Liège, Belgium, in July next year.

The theme of this second forum is “la francophonie creative,” which takes a novel approach citing that “French, through its creativity, is a factor in individual success and the durable development of societies.”

Read the full article at http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=59488