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Russian is past, Chinese is future? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sumabeast Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6915 days ago 212 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 65 of 150 16 May 2006 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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isn't it strange that while China with such an enormously rich history, and culture, antiquity, however no one ever hardly mentions these reasons for why they want to learn chinese.
People talk about learning Greek for the writings of the great thinkers or to access New Testament.Hebrew for Old Testament Bible. learning Italian for the opera, German and Russian for science, physics, philosophy, etc. Russian for Tchakovsky or Tolstoi and great literary giants, French for fashion and cuisine. But Chinese has all that and more: ancient texts, great thinkers Tsao, Confucius, science Accupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, and so on, but you rarely hear these reasons mentioned. moslty people talk about the potential future of China as an economic/politcal giant and super power. I just thought this was peculiar, are people overlooking more important and intellectually fulfilling reasons to learn Chinese? Besides Russian I believe will continue to be an important language of the future not the past for many decades to come. It's just too huge of a country not to be with many millions of native speakers, and millions more of 2nd language speakers, besides Russia still remains a country where very few people speak any other language, much like Japan and China too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arti Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 7001 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 66 of 150 17 May 2006 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
actually Tchaikovsky was a composer, classical music you know... And people who learn chinese are mostly from the "golden west" and educational system of these countries is very narrow minded i.e. students are concentrated mostly on their country, hence there's a lack of knowledge about the rest of the world, especially in USA. So that's why people don't mention that China has a rich history, great philosofers etc. But all this stuff exists in any country, every nation has its own rich culture, so learning any language is first of all discovering something new in this world... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6932 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 67 of 150 17 May 2006 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I personally know two native-born white Americans who speak fluent Chinese and whose occupations do not in the least benefit from knowing it. Of course, this does not add up to statistics, but I would think that at least in this forum many people are indeed interested in languages and cultures for their own sake. Not that there is anything wrong with learning a language for practical reasons - the mere fact of learning a language well as an adult means that the person is not intellectually lazy, since it does take a good deal of effort. Edited by frenkeld on 18 May 2006 at 6:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6766 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 68 of 150 19 May 2006 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would say Russian will continue to have more utility for Westerners than Chinese simply because Russia is a central part of European politics.
China's economic growth is dependent on its trade with the USA. If their enormous trade advantage is ever reveresed, they will be pretty screwed, because Chinese consumers can't make up for the lost market in the ultra-consumerist USA. What I mean is, at present the Chinese people have much less use for mountains of cheap plastic sh**. Furthermore I can't see Chinese becoming a lingua franca in Asia given the general lack of empathy between the peoples of East Asia, and especially given fear of Chinese expansionism. That's why they already prefer English. If China's economic expansion stops then they will probably chose to resume military/political expansionism. And does anyone really think people in Europe and America will start using Chinese as their second language? If only for cultural reasons I don't see that ever happening. China is important enough now as the historically and still dominant force in Asia, so anybody interested in Asia ought to consider learning it. But hailing China as the upcoming world leader and economic superpower is a little premature. There is plenty of good literature in both Chinese and Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6932 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 69 of 150 20 May 2006 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wonder if this logic is consistent with historic facts. One rather gets the impression that it is when the societies are at their most agressive and expansionist that their language is most studied. German was probably more widely studied in the years leading up to WWII than it is now, Russian had more status during the Cold War, English is probably not seen as strictly the language of tree-huggers, and the level of interest in Arabic has shot up after 9-11. I bet if China eventually succeeds in taking over Taiwan, in whose case the wishes of its 23 million inhabitants seem to have been pretty much written off by the "Free" World, the study of Mandarin will experience further increase. Power, even in its less attractive forms, seems to attract. Edited by frenkeld on 20 May 2006 at 1:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6766 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 70 of 150 21 May 2006 at 2:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're obviously right. But I didn't say interest in Chinese wouldn't increase. I said it wouldn't become a lingua franca. The study of Russian and Arabic may have increased in the West but it didn't adopt these as communication languages in place of English and French. I was just saying Chinese will not in the foreseeable future be used between people from Korea, Japan, Philipines, or anywhere else outside China as a primary communication language. Edited by Virginian683 on 21 May 2006 at 2:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6757 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 71 of 150 21 May 2006 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
There's reasons to think otherwise. Right now, Chinese factories pump out goods and trade them for worthless (for now) pieces of green American paper, which the government merely hoards in vaults. They have nearly a trillion of them. While the trade imbalance keeps factories busy, it also keeps the Chinese people less wealthy than they could be. Just wait until China decides to use those trillion bucks and start buying huge amounts of capital around the world. Then sending cheap electronics to the US won't be so important any more. Everyone will want a piece of the action in China, and a billion Mandarin speakers will be the world's largest consumer demographic. America is ultra-consumerist because everyone's going into debt and buying groceries with credit cards and home financing. Guess who wins in the end, the lenders or the ones in debt?
That changes with time. Chinese has large, influential native-speaker populations in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and probably other countries I've forgotten. China is a popular destination for Japanese, and the popularity of the Chinese language in Japan seems to be on the rise. I believe it's second only to English here. Anecdote: one of the best friends of a Chinese-Canadian classmate at my university was Japanese, and even though she was schooling in Canada, her English wasn't as good as her Mandarin, so she usually spoke Mandarin with my classmate. I tell you, trilingual conversations in Mandarin, English, and Japanese over lunch are fun! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6766 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 72 of 150 21 May 2006 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Right. I think China is the largest buyer of US bonds. As the US debt increases China gains more and more leverage. This is not generally appreciated. If China tried to cash in the bonds the US economy would collapse. But they have no reason to do that now because the system is working for them. I think if US growth ended their growth would be affected too. Edited by Virginian683 on 21 May 2006 at 7:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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