While English, Mandarin, Spanish and Hindi (or Arabic according to estimates) are the four most spoken languages in the world, French ranks fifth with nearly 300 million French speakers in the world. world. According to demographic forecasts, French should be spoken by around 700 million people in 2050, and could thus climb on the podium.
According to the National Institute for Statistical Studies (INED), within thirty years, Africa will be the most populous continent in the world with more than 2.5 billion inhabitants. Thus, in 2050, one in four human beings will live on this continent and Nigeria will become the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India. An evolution that will upset the established classification of languages that currently dominate the world.
According to the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), the number of French speakers could triple in thirty years, and at the same time become the language spoken by nearly 8% of the world’s population (compared to 3% today). ). Several reasons explain this development.
African demographic evolution
On the one hand, purely demographic reasons. French is spoken in more than 30 countries in Africa, including 21 as an official or co-official language, and due to the demographic evolution of the continent, nearly 85% of French speakers will be African in 2050.
3/ The most populous French-speaking country in the world is the Democratic Republic of Congo (source: @UN_en) #SLFF18 #francophonie pic.twitter.com/hSbXhDUDP4
— France Diplomacy (@francediplo) March 16, 2018
On the other hand, the OIF reveals that French is the second most learned language in the world, the second most used language in international organizations and the media, the third language in the business world, and the fourth on the Internet.
French is also the only language in the world, with English, to be able to claim to be used on the five continents. A total of nearly 300 million people in 106 countries and territories are able to speak French.
In other words, in 2050, thanks to this international presence, particularly in countries whose population will explode over the course of the century, French has every chance of being spoken more than Spanish, Arabic and Hindi.