(I mean, at least in the Metropolitan area) Earlier I waited in line at a shop in Helsinki and behind me was a large group of schoolkids, all various people of colour and all speaking American English with each other. It’s a fairly common occurrence in Eastern Helsinki and makes you feel like you’re in the US or Canada
It’s interesting how quick things have developed just since I was a kid
I think it’s cool but it seems to cause Finnish boomers enormous existential anxiety of the Great Replacement variety
I actually think we’ve just passed the high water mark of English. As a multipolar world emerges from underneath American hegemony, people will rediscover their own cultures and languages. You can see this in China when even 10 years ago the biggest blockbusters were all American movies but for the last couple of years American films have struggled to break the top 10.
Similarly, with China investing heavily in Africa, many Africans are choosing to learn Chinese for educational and business opportunities. Then you have places like the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia has introduced mandatory Chinese lessons im school.
Geopolitics also plays a huge role, for example in Russia where sanctions have caused people to turn away from Western culture en masse to look Eastwards and inwards.
That’s what I mean by several standardized world languages. It’s not impossible to foresee a world where 90+% of people natively speak English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, or Arabic. Is that bad, is that good? Idk, but it’s definitely something new.
Interesting to compare languages by native speakers vs total speakers.