An opinion I have over the linguistic development of the future - even if the US lose some or even all of their power, English will stay the main international lingua franca for quite a long time.

There is precedent for this - Latin retained a very important place in the intellectual and international relations sphere centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire (it& #39;s still the language of the Catholic Church).

The cultural power of English in the modern world is probably deeper than that of Latin during the Roman Empire - it& #39;s the language of aviation, science, academia in general, lots and lots of incredibly popular pop culture products, and trade.

Competitor languages aren& #39;t as well attested - Mandarin Chinese has quite few L2 speakers outside the Sinosphere, and has the pragmatic disadvantage of using a ideographic system in a world where alphabetic systems are much, much easier to make machine-friendly.