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Russian is past, Chinese is future? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6776 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 89 of 150 08 June 2006 at 2:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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If the rise of China continues, expect to see hanzi taught in the better
grade schools 50 years from now. Learning them is mainly a problem for adults, after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7326 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 90 of 150 08 June 2006 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I see that a lot of people are worried that somehow China would overtake the United States (and Chinese over English). I don't think it's happening any time soon. (if at all) A more important priority would actually for all Chinese to become literate in the (Han - what we call Chinese) language, which currently is not the case, particularly for the many ethnic minorities.
However, you would start to see more use of Chinese around the world. As more Chinese tourists travel around the world, Chinese guides and printed material in Chinese will be in greater demand. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7191 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 91 of 150 09 June 2006 at 5:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that learning Mandarin for a westerner and learning English for a Mandarin speaker is probably about on the same difficulty level. Lets look at it from the point of view of pronounciation, grammar, vocabulary and the writing system.
- Pronounciation. I think the difficulty level here is about equal for Mandarin speakers learning English and English speakers learning Mandarin. The primary difficulty for westerners is the tones. However in my view this difficulty can be overcome rather quickly with correct study techinques. Mandarin speakers probably have an easier time learning English intonation since they naturally have a better ear for intonation. However English have some featuers that present difficulties such as final consonants, voiced consonants, consonant clusters and long-short vowel distinction. I think getting a really good accent should be about on the same level of difficulty. - Grammar. Here I actually think that the English person learning Mandarin has the advantage. If you are willing to accept that things are often said radically different in Mandarin. The Mandarin speaker has to deal with verb conjugations, tenses, subject verb agreement and so on. All of which are absent in mandarin. - Vocabulary. I think the difficulty level here is about equal. There are almost no cognates whatsoever between the two languages so everything must be learnt from scratch. -Writing system. Here obviously the english speaker is a t a disadvantage, having to memorize 3000+ characters in order to read in the language. However the Mandarin speaker still has to deal with one of the most inconsitent spelling system in the world. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sayariza Triglot Groupie Indonesia Joined 6771 days ago 42 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Malay, Indonesian*, DutchC1 Studies: EnglishC2 | Message 92 of 150 09 June 2006 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think chinese never be a language for future.
I agree with maxb said. But I am sure that China will be the biggest English speaking country as second language in the future. Most of educated chinese I ever met speak English very good. Although some of them have an strong chinese accent that make me (and most people) difficult to understand well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6951 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 93 of 150 09 June 2006 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
At the very least, you can't say that about reading - here alphabets reign supreme. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6838 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 94 of 150 26 July 2006 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
The golden age of the British Empire have been the 19th and the early 20th centuries,not the 18th.Just to be precise :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6929 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 95 of 150 26 July 2006 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't say that Chinese characters are a step back from an alphabet. I'd say they add clarity. They do what English does with spelling "there, their, they're" or "sea, see" or "too, two, to" differently. On the other hand, if I write the word "can" what am I talking about? Is it the noun, or the adjective? You can't tell without context, whereas with characters, each character has a distinct meaning. And when there are something like 40 common different characters for both "shi" and "yi" each, (disregarding tones) then the superiority of the Chinese characters for representing Chinese is unmistakable. When this sentence looks like this written in pinyin: ma ma ma ma ma? I think it's pretty easy to see why characters are here to stay. Besides, they're fun! :)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6951 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 96 of 150 26 July 2006 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd rather think positively and say that an alphabet is a step forward from hyeroglyphic writing.
Yes, historical, rather than fully phonetic spelling, is a way to distinguish words. French writing would probably look pretty interesting without historic spelling. However, the real issue is efficiency - alphabets are much easier to master, even when the spelling for a given language is not very phonetic. As for tonal languages, is Vietnamese tonal? It certainly has an alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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