By 2100 French Will Be Spoken by More People Than English — The Geography Behind Why

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]By 2100, French may be spoken by more people than English. Not because people are choosing to learn French, because 60% of French speakers already live in Africa, and Africa's population is heading toward 4 billion. The fastest growing language by percentage over the past 50 years is Urdu.

[00:00:16]Pakistan's population has grown from 65 million to 240 million since 1970.

[00:00:22]Everyone born there speaks Urdu. Swahili is becoming the language of East African economic integration, 250 million speakers across a billion-person region.

[00:00:31]And Korean. Korean has 80 million speakers. No colonies, no empire, slow population growth. Yet Korean is growing as a learned language faster than almost anything on Earth.

[00:00:42]In India alone, Korean learning grew 75% [music] in 1 year. Because of K-pop.

[00:00:48]A boy band changed the geography of language.

[00:00:51]For the first time in history, a language is spreading through through smartphones, not through armies.

[00:00:57]Watch the full video on our Where on Earth channel, link in bio.