Indeed, that is by far the most likely outcome. There is a slim possibility that the EU will, over the next dozen or so years become more and more like a country, and will eventually adopt English in the same way as they adopted the Euro. If this happens soon enough, then I actually think English could stay popular even after China has become the world superpower.

''So in the future when the English language finally kills off all other forms of language and becomes the standard world wide''

I think there are very, very few educated people that would suggest this could ever happen.

''w'ho's accent do you think will prevail? ''

Comparitive linguistics (especially Indo-Aryan languages) and evolutionry linguistics are serious side interests of mine. I have to say that you can't rationally pose a question like that. Even if everyone in the world spoke English, then there would still be a plethora of different variations and accents that you wouldn't be able to charactarize.

Anyways, interesting question though.

Newfoundland.

Definitely.

It is true that Mandarin Chinese is a widely spoken language but it will never become a world language. The English language is the lead in many areas such as business and law. Also we have examples as with NATO where English is command language. If I were to choose an alternative to English it would still not be Chinese but probably Spanish even French or German as these are widely spoken in many countries. Large, small empires and colonies have helped of course now it is the internet.

As for a specific dialect I do not explect one to emerge look at the UK to see how the local dialect can remain despite it being the first language for generations. Obviously the language itself will grow and change and actually that is another reason why English does so well.

Oft overlooked language which is increasingly dramatically is Welsh when I was a nipper only a couple of Welsh nash spoke the lingo but now it is spoken widely in both the North and South. That said it has a long way to go.

Diolch yn fawr Galwch eto.

More people in the world speak Chinese then English, and China is very quickly becoming a super power. With a population 3 times as large as USA's, and all technology built from China, it's more likely people will be speaking Chinese in the next century.

Also a lot of countries have incredible national pride, like Korea for instance. It's almost imposible to buy a non-korean car or phone in Korea, and in order to be a citizen you must be born there. Places like that will never have english as the primary language.

You also never been to Europe because if you have, you would know that every country is strong to hold their own language.

What's more likely going to happen is that English will be the primary language for North America and Europe. In such an event, regionally people will speak differently. In large cities you will likely see a blended accent, mostly asian, and regionally (like China town, little italy, etc) you will see different accents.

In rural southern states you will get a red-neck accent (and I've been to Texas many times, people really sound red-neck), In costal cities like California, and Miami, you will get a very fake accent, people who over-pronounce vowels, almost british. Then in rural areas in northern states (like New York and Washington), and in Canada, you will likely get a European mixed accent, or generally white. Really far north, like Yukon, Alaska, and NWT, you will get Indian accents due to the higher native population.

As for Europe, they kind of already established their accents. If anything major cities will just sound more asian.

I say it will be rather arabic :).

damn, not that I disklike their accent but most of them speaks so fast they are sometimes hard to follow. Very nice folks though.

I think you meant to post this in the off topic section.  Anyways, English will always have different dialects due to geographical reasons.

300 million Chinese do not speak English. That's the figure for learners. The figure for people who actually speak the language fluently is some 10 million, or 18th in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

The USA has by far the largest English-speaking population of any country. India also has over 100 million, but that's only 10% of the population.

Because of the USA's domination by that measure, its provision of aid, the prevalence of American culture and America's population in general, the American accent will undoubtedly be the most common, but of course, regional dialects will have different accents (and yes, it will happen eventually; English is by far the most commonly spoken language in the world, and we'll never form a half-decent world government without a single official language spoken by everyone).

Also: American English is not wrong just because it is a variation of English. British English is also a variation of late 18th Century English. Americans took several steps to simplify the language. American English is a dialect, and as a dialect it is more widely spoken than British English (which is, itself, a dialect, but is commonly accepted to be the official dialect)

I wish the New Zealand accent would prevail. ..I really like it.