Title: Topic 3Discuss the status and future of the following major languages: Russian, French, Mandarin and Hindi.Full Name:Shazmin Binti ShaharinNur DaniaEmail:[email protected] Date:Course Code and NameLET101Lecturer’s Name:Dr. Manjeet Kaur Mehar SinghRussian language originated from the Indo-European family and includes 8 subgroups and in this case, Russian belongs to Slavic subgroup. This subgroup is also divided into three branches which are Eastern, Western and Southern. Russian language belongs to Eastern branch along with Ukrainian and Belorussian. Indo-European family is the world’s largest family as it contains languages from Europe and Asia.
. Russian language status was stated in the The Constitution of the Russian Federation as Statutory national language (1993, Constitution, Article 68(1)). Russian language is also one of the UN official languages and used in meetings of various UN organizations.Other than that, Russian language is the official language of a few other organizations. These organizations are Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Russia along side Brazil, China and India are countries recognized as the world’s biggest emerging economies. It is predicted in 2050, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and Indonesian will dominate the business world, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. (Source: U.
N. World Population Prospects/British Council).Today, Russian language is widely used around the world with the total number of Russian speakers, 265,026,130, according to ethnologue in 2018. Russian language is the official language of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. According to UN demographic forecasts by 2050 the number of Russian residents will decrease to 110 million people, the number of ethnic Russians being only 83 million people. Russia is a growing influential power in the world today.
In the future, if United States of America’s current president, Donald Trump, is serious about building a working relationship with Russia, not only both America and Russia will benefit, but Russian economy will surge and Russia may finally emerge as a major economic power on a global scale. When this happens, this could offer business opportunities in Russia and while most Russian business people will speak English, a person gains an advantage with Russians by showing them the courtesy of learning their language and speaking it fluently. This will provide a solid foundation towards a long term business relationships.French language also originated from Indo-European language family and belongs to Romance subgroup and is a Romance language. French language is one of the most spoken language in the world. It is ranked 6th most spoken language in the world after Mandarin with the total number of 284,952,860 french speakers around the world according to ethnologue. French is spoken in all 5 continents and is the official language of 29 countries. The world bank has 6 official languages and it includes both Russian and French language.
Other than that, French is also one of United Nation’s working languages. Moreover, French is known as the “Language of Diplomacy” as documents are always provided in French and before United Nations was founded, the League of Nations used two languages, French and English to conduct it’s business as international dialogue was needed for it’s operations. French was chosen because it was widely used in many important sectors which are business, science and international diplomacy. Furthermore, it is a language that is widely taught in educational system around the world as foreign language or second language. French is one of the three procedural languages of the European Union and the main language used for the deliberations of the Court of Justice of the European Union. French is the sole official language of the Universal Postal Union (UPU).
Moreover, it is one of the working languages of many other major international institutions such as UNESCO, WHO and FIFA. French plays an important part internationally in sports as it is the official language of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and hence of the Olympic Games. Countries with french speakers plays an active part in the world’s economy as it accounts for about 20% of the world’s trade in goods. It is also ranked between 6th and 8th most widely used language on the internet.
Future-As a result of population growth, the OIF estimates that the number of French speakers will rise to over 700 million by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. This would take the proportion of French speakers in the world population from 3% to 8%.
