The great Jakob Grimm, the founder of comparative philology, hazarded the guess more than three-quarters of a century ago that English would one day become the chief language of the world, and perhaps crowd out several of the then principal idioms altogether. “In wealth, wisdom and strict economy,” he said, “none of the other living languages can vie with it.” At that time the guess was bold, for English was still in fifth place, with not only French and German ahead of it, but also Spanish and Russian. In 1801, according to Michael George Mulhall, the relative standing of the five, in the number of persons using them, was as follows:
French.....................31,450,000
Russian.....................30,770,000
German.....................30,320,000
Spanish.....................26,190,000
English.....................20,520,000 1
The population of the United States was then but little more than 5,000,000, but in twenty years it had nearly doubled, and thereafter it increased steadily and enormously, and by 1860 it was greater than that of the United Kingdom. Since that time the majority of English-speaking persons in the world have lived on this side of the water; today there are nearly three times as many as in the United Kingdom and nearly twice as many as in the whole British Empire. This enormous increase in the American population, beginning with the great immigrations of the 30’s and 40’s, quickly lifted English to fourth place among the languages, and then to third, to second and to first. When it took the lead the attention of philologists was actively directed to the matter, and in 1868 one of them, a German named Brackebusch, first seriously raised the question whether English was destined to obliterate certain of the older tongues. 2 Brackebusch decided against it on various philological grounds, none of them particularly sound. His own figures, as the following table from his dissertation shows, 3 were rather against him:
English.....................60,000,000
German.....................52,000,000
Russian.....................45,000,000
French.....................45,000,000
Spanish.....................40,000,000
This is 1868. Before another generation had passed the lead of English, still because of the great growth of the United States, and yet more impressive, as the following figures for 1890 show:
English.....................111,100,000
German.....................75,200,000
Russian.....................75,000,000
French.....................51,200,000
Spanish.....................42,800,000
Italian.....................33,400,000
Portuguese.....................13,000,000 4
The next estimates, for the year 1900, I take from Jespersen. The statisticians responsible for them I do not know:
English.....................from 116,000,000 to 123,000,000
German.....................from 75,000,000 to 80,000,000
Russian.....................from 70,000,000 to 85,000,000
French.....................from 45,000,000 to 52,000,000
Spanish.....................from 44,000,000 to 58,000,000
Italian.....................from 34,000,000 to 54,000,000
Now comes an estimate as of 1911
English.....................160,000,000
German.....................130,000,000
Russian.....................100,000,000
French.....................70,000,000
Spanish.....................50,000,000
Italian.....................50,000,000
Portuguese.....................25,000,000
And now one, somewhat more moderate, as of 1912:
English.....................150,000,000
German.....................90,000,000
Russian.....................106,000,000
French.....................47,000,000
Spanish.....................52,000,000
Italian.....................37,000,000 6
If we accept the 1911 estimate, we find English spoken by two and a half times as many persons as spoke it at the close of the Civil War, and by nearly eight times as many as spoke it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. No other language spread to any such extent during the century. German made a fourfold gain, but that was just half the gain made by English. Russian, despite the vast extension of the Russian Empire during the century, barely more than tripled its users, and French barely doubled them. Perhaps all of the figures in the table are excessive; that is almost certainly true of German, and probably also true of English and French. The same authority, in 1921, modified them as follows:
nglish.....................150,000,000
German.....................120,000,000
Russian.....................90,000,000
French.....................60,000,000
Spanish.....................55,000,000
Italian.....................40,000,000
Portuguese.....................30,000,000
this information is taken from http://www.bartleby.com/185/54.html
then people we must know that english is the future and all people all over the world use english in their talking english is the first language and all use it so are you with me that's english is the future and my english teacher always tell me that "english is the future" and i am agree with him :D
that's all thank you for reading