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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5532 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 81 of 249 24 October 2009 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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As I mentioned earlier, I don't believe Mandarin is going to be the lingua franca, but as far as I know, some westerners who're fluent (not proficient) in Mandarin might usually reach a high position in multinational corporations, even if you were down to your luck, at least you could find a job at educational institutions which train office staff in foreign languages skills, you would probably enjoy your life of high salary and low price in mainland China.
Strangely enough, in the eyes of the Chinese, the leading experts on English grammar (also on the grammar of other foreign languages) are generally some Chinese professors (for example, Mr zhāng-dào-zhēn) rather than those famous native ones. In the past, many Chinese concentrated their efforts on tackling grammatical difficulties, memorizing obscure vocabularies, and reading occidental literature, unfortunately, they (even some well-educated) could hardly get used to any fluent, colloquial, and natural conversation, especially the listening comprehension, worse still, you would often hear plenty of funny Chinglish in conversation. However, it seems as if the current situation in China has gone to the opposite extreme, students have no interest in the grammar, the usage, the purity of English or other languages (including Mandarin), they're mad about unrefined slang, offensive rap, and non-standard expression, the same thing (vicious cycle) also happens to Mandarin seriously, maybe I'm something of a conservative, and it's worth mentioning that, if you are willing to learn Mandarin, please do choose your free teacher or resource cautiously, the more often you practise broken or incorrect Mandarin, the worse it's getting for you to improve your level. Incidentally, IMHO, those Chinese who've always been very, very confident Chinese (Mandarin) should be, or could be romanized (without confusion, trouble, inefficiency, & without cultural gap between ancient and modern China), are mostly good at neither Chinese nor English, not to mention other foreign languages. And it's ironic that, they never dare to carry out a series of experiments (which I always asked them to do by themselves) to prove their theory, the method is to pick some books at random, and translate them from characters completely to pīn-yīn (latinized text), then just check whether it looks like a load of b*****t on the whole, whether it really performs better than characters does, whether considerable confusion can be easily resolved only in context (particularly the written form). Edited by Keith on 24 October 2009 at 3:53pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 82 of 249 25 October 2009 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see any reason at all for Chinese to become a lingua franca. There are absolutely no such tendencies at present, and extremely powerful trends in the direction of English, especially what concerns the Chinese themselves.
At a time when English studies is spreading like wildfire in China and Chinese people seem to think that teaching their children English will make the rich and famous, why exactly do you think Chinese will come to dominate, even outside China? The only arguments I have seen so far here are (unconvincing) observations that might indicate that the speed at which all the world abandons their native tongues to embrace English is slowing down, or at least has stopped accelerating. From that it is hard to draw the conclusion that Chinese or Spanish would take within the next hundred years or so. I mean, come on, I've seen two unrelated Chinese mothers here in Stockholm this week speaking English to their children, despite being fluent in Swedish themselves. Linguistically speaking, it's easier for the world to adopt English because 25% of its population already speak an Indo-European language. Sure, the Sino-Tibetan group is almost as large, but those speakers are all concentrated around China. Let's face reality, China hasn't even passed tiny Japan in GDP, they are just above Germany. When China becomes the cultural hegemon of the world and teenagers in New York sit down every week to watch the latest episode of "Pengyou" about 6 young people sharing two flats in Peking, something I don't think will ever happen, we can start talking. At this point the entire world is still frantically busy with emulating the American lifestyle, and this only seems to get worse. Edited by Gusutafu on 25 October 2009 at 12:06am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5700 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 84 of 249 25 October 2009 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Note: A lingua franca is a third language used in commerce and possibly in diplomacy. Mandarin is a lingua franca, as are Arabic, Hindi, Russian, French, Portugese. Fula, Swahili, Yoruba and many others. Lingua franca utility does not necessarily imply cultural or political domination.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 85 of 249 25 October 2009 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that this thread is probably about a possible GLOBAL lingua franca. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5529 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 86 of 249 25 October 2009 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
I guess we discuss Chinese as a vehicular language. But there are many linguas francas in the world. Check this link out to see a very long list indeed! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 87 of 249 26 October 2009 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Interesting, it seems Cantonese loses ground very rapidly in the US. In China it is probably the same because of the government's efforts to promote Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 88 of 249 27 October 2009 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Another reason why I think Chinese will not become the world's next lingua franca is the fact that China has a one child policy. In the near future the country's population will start aging rapidly and then shrinking. Like Russia's or Japan's. Spanish is in a much better position to become the next lingua franca. Spanglish probably has an even better chance. A rapidly growing number of speakers is the key in my opinion.
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