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What Language Will the Future Speak?

When thinking about the future, it is easy to get trapped into thinking that one technology will “win” to the exclusion of all others. This is rarely the case, but it still doesn’t stop a great many futurists from adopting a myopic view of the future.

This is especially true in the field of language training. To many futurists, the near exponential advances in voice and speech recognition technology will render language training obsolete. After all, why learn Spanish, French or Arabic when a voice translation device will rapidly translate anything you say or hear but without the burden or cost of having to spend countless hours learning a new language (not to mention not having to learn how to congugate your verbs in entirely new ways.)

There is much to be said for this vision and I tend to believe that voice tranlation technology will radically transform how business and tourism is conducted in the years ahead. At the same time, I don’t see language training going away. I do, however, see it taking on a much different form. Specifically, rather than learning a new language from a teacher, a tape or a DVD, I believe more and more people will form social networks around language and seek to learn from each other. In other words, an American wishing to learn Italian will team up over the Internet with an Italian wishing to learn English. This vision is already coming to fruition at such sites as LiveMocha.

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