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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6168 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 1 of 249 15 October 2009 at 6:10am | IP Logged |
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I read that China in many aspects will become #1 in a decade, and in decades Mandarin will be the lingua franca instead of English.
true? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 249 15 October 2009 at 6:45am | IP Logged |
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I doubt Chinese could overcome the international influence of English. There may be more native speakers of Chinese, but they are concentrated in China, whereas dozens of countries on all continents have English as an official language, including India, the only other country with a billion people in it.
9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5535 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 3 of 249 15 October 2009 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
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Objectively, I don't agree on this speculation, on the contrary, I think it necessary for the Chinese to calm down and ponder over the present situation of China in front of various media hype. However, I feel quite confident that Mandarin is without doubt much more useful/practical than Hindi. No offence!
Edited by YoshiYoshi on 15 October 2009 at 7:25am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6054 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 4 of 249 15 October 2009 at 7:17am | IP Logged |
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I think it should. I would laugh to see all Americans forced to learn it, as they learn English in China.
But no, it's not going to happen. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5578 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 249 15 October 2009 at 8:12am | IP Logged |
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It already is the lingua franca... in parts of Asia where it has been for hundreds of
years. But more to the point, why would its range of influence expand? Certainly those doing business in China will learn Chinese. Just as those Chinese doing business in the west learn English. But what reason would there be for, say, science and politics to be done in Chinese instead of English, outside of China? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Zorrillo Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 6388 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, French, Sign Language, Spanish, Polish Studies: Greek, Georgian, Indonesian | Message 6 of 249 15 October 2009 at 10:32am | IP Logged |
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The Chinese writing system is far too complex for the language to ever dethrone English. Without an accessible writing system, it will be hard for the language to expand much beyond its borders, because most people are not willing to put in that kind of time.
12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5990 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 7 of 249 15 October 2009 at 11:32am | IP Logged |
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English has a horrible spelling system. Don't underestimate how difficult it can be for other people to learn English. Also, people don't choose to learn English because it's "nice and easy" or something. They are typically economically driven to learn it in order to get a better job. If the same thing were to happen with Chinese, due to economic and political circumstances, then it wouldn't be a matter of "oh no, Chinese writing is complex"...people would just have to learn it.
Also, having attended a Chinese university and met many students there, I can quite readily believe that it is theoretically possible that Chinese may become a dominant scientific language in a few decades. When you look at the population of china, and the amount of effort the government is putting into science & tech education, and the difficulty of English for speakers of a totally unrelated language, it starts to become more feasible that there could be more and more scientific publishing done in Chinese. This sort of scientific publishing could take off quite easily just within the Chinese scientific community, just because of the size of it. It could be a flourishing publishing community without having to rely on any outside people for readership. This could give rise to other countries starting to contribute to it too, especially if the world economy favours business relationships with Chinese tech companies. Anyway, if all of this somehow happens, i don't think it will be a linguistic matter of "Chinese is hard, i don't wanna learn it." Instead, it will be a matter of political and economic forces, the same way English is "enforced" today. 18 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Tupiniquim Senior Member Brazil Joined 6087 days ago 184 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, Russian | Message 8 of 249 15 October 2009 at 12:42pm | IP Logged |
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Maybe it will be the international language someday, but not within our lifetime span.
4 persons have voted this message useful |
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