Is it possible that Chinese language takes the place of English language?
In the United Kingdom, surprisingly there is an increasing trend in learning Chinese language. More and more high schools in there have introduced Chinese language lessons .Some predict that Chinese will eventually takes the place of English. However, I don’t think this will happen because of the difficulties of learning Chinese, English current status and commerce-oriented reason for learning language.
First, the hardship of learning Chinese makes this language uneasy to be globally popular. Chinese is not a language, like English and Greek, based on alphabets. You can just learn Chinese word by word. This takes lots of time, even learning basic and daily-used words. Also, it is tough for non-native speakers to remember the symbols of Chinese words, which Putonghua aural alphabets cannot help. Conversely, it is easy to learn fundamental English because there are only 26 alphabets.
Second, English is currently the most used language in the globe, which creates barriers for Chinese to be widely used. Nowadays, the most trusted scientific research reports and the most famous movies are both in English. Many international organizations, for example WTO and the Red Cross, prefer using English in their announcements.
Finally, the main reason for learning Chinese is the convenience of doing business with China. Only few of the learners are attracted by Chinese culture. Moreover, we can look back to the history that more Japanese learning English and fewer other peoples learning Japanese, while the economy of Japan was strongly influenced in the 1970s. So, it is possible that more Chinese learning English and fewer other peoples learning Chinese, while China is economically powerful now.
In conclusion, learning the language of Chinese is obviously an increasing trend but not the replacement of that of English. If you take the population into account, around 1.5 billion Chinese native speakers, including in the Great China Region and overseas, and about 1.5 billion English native speakers, including in the UK, US, Australasia, Canada and India, are close in number. Therefore, I predict a worldwide bilingual trend would be more rational, since Chinese and English will be both vitally important in the future.