Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca?
Tags: Lingua franca \| Language Importance \| Cultural Identity \| China \| Mandarin
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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knadolny
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Message 105 of 249

04 November 2009 at 1:16pm | IP Logged

w1n73rmu7e wrote:

Are we forgetting that China as we know it started off as a small gathering of people in the Yellow River delta (right?) They then formed an empire as big as the Roman empire. When the Roman empire and the Han empires both collapsed, the Chinese reunited. After a few more repeats of division and reunification, China has become the country we know today, a seriously massive country. China means "middle kingdom" as they saw themsevles in the middle of the world. From their perspective Chinese was the lengua franca.

Chinese characters helped China form a highly cohesive culture. Europe is still struggling to form a strong union that can compete with the US and China even though most of those countries can speak English.

I think you're argument is flawed in that it underestimates the Chinese. People said that Chinese couldn't be typed so they had to move to an alphabet. Instead the world went from typewriters to word processors. Typing Chinese is now simple. Maybe harder than English but still simple.

The whole country communicates to each other regardless of the fact many people speak different dialects as a mother tongue. They can still all communicate with the characters. TV always has the characters in the subtitles so people who don't understand the spoken language can still follow along.

Chinese might not become a lengua franca, but not for the reason that you can't make errors in the language.
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Rikyu-san
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Message 106 of 249

05 November 2009 at 10:20pm | IP Logged

This was a useful eye-opener for me. The Guardian is now translating some of their articles into Chinese!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/chinese
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mick33
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Message 107 of 249

05 November 2009 at 11:03pm | IP Logged

w1n73rmu7e wrote:

@doviende:

I think a big point that you're missing is that English orthography is highly error tolerant. Even if you can't spell a word correctly, as long as you can approximate it according to the pronunciation, you will be understood. Similarly, even if you completely mangle English intonation, you can be understood.

Both of these advantages don't exist in Mandarin, and are vital for a language that is to be used as a lingua franca, because it will have an enormous number of second language speakers who will mangle both the spoken and written versions of the language.

Here's a paper on this topic, if you're interested.

From the paper:

Quote:

The most astounding example I encountered back in my early days studying Chinese was during a lunch with three graduate students in the Peking University Chinese department. I had a bad cold that day, and wanted to write a note to a friend to cancel a meeting. I found that I couldn’t write the character ti 嚔 in the word for “sneeze”, da penti 打喷 , and so I asked my three friends for help. To my amazement, none of the three could successfully retrieve the character ti 嚔. Three Chinese graduate students at China’s most prestigious university could not write the word for “sneeze” in their own native script! One simply cannot imagine a similar situation in a phonetic script environmente.g., three Harvard graduate students unable to write a common word like “sneeze” in the orthography of their native language.

…

I have occasionally taught English to Beijing schoolchildren, and one day I was helping a class of third graders review English words for body parts. One little boy wrote “knee” on the blackboard, and then, as he attempted to write the Chinese translation xigai 膝盖, found he could not write the characters. I found this rather intriguing, and I begin to quiz the class on common words for body parts and everyday objects, and within a few minutes we came up with a list of words like (again) yaoshi 钥匙 “ key”, niaochao 鸟巢 “bird’s nest”, lajiao 辣椒 “ hot pepper”, huazhuang 化妆 “ makeup”, gebo 胳膊 “ arm”, jugong 鞠躬 “ bow”, and so on, all of which they could write (or correctly guess) in English, but could not successfully render in Chinese script. Abilities varied greatly, of course, and a couple of the brighter kids could seemingly write almost any character, but for most of them, their written English lexicon had already made a few semantic inroads that were still inaccessible via the Chinese characters. After the class I mentioned this interesting (and to me, distressing) state of affairs to some of the parents who stayed on to chat with me. This gave rise to a lively discussion, during which we found that many of the parents, to their bemused chagrin, also stumbled over characters in common words like saozhou 扫帚 “ broom”, gebozhou 胳膊肘 “ elbow”, zhouwen 皱纹 “ wrinkle”, aizheng 癌症 “ cancer”, menkan 门槛 “ threshold”, qi 鳍 “ fin”, chiru 耻辱 “ shame”, xidicao 洗涤槽 “ kitchen sink”, Lundun 伦敦 “ London”, and so on. Many of these adults held advanced degrees, and one was an editor at a Beijing newspaper. One of the parents sheepishly confided in me “I wince when I my child asks me how to write a character, because I often can’t remember, either. This has happened so often that I’ve totally lost face in this regard, and nowadays the joke in our house is ‘Look it up, you’ll remember it longer.’”

I think these stories simply show that Chinese people may value speaking more than writing.

Edited by mick33 on 05 November 2009 at 11:04pm
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Hoopskidoodle
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Message 108 of 249

06 November 2009 at 9:14am | IP Logged

sebngwa3 wrote:

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?

I highly doubt that. While Mandarin has more native speakers, they tend to be concentrated in one place. English is by far the most widely spoken (in terms of numbers of countries) language. And, that trend show no sign of slowing down.
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Choscura
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Message 109 of 249

06 November 2009 at 7:39pm | IP Logged

It will never happen, for two key reasons: first, we are finally on the brink of being able to instantly, logically translate anything with a high degree of accuracy, especially for distinct and exact things like science and math. Google Translate is probably the best-known example of relatively accurate (not literal, but implied) translations, but it is far from the only example. You can say it sucks now, but it was a million times worse than this ten years ago and look where it is now- and just guess where it'll be in even 2 or 3 years, with native speakers able to edit grammar on a case-by-case basis in each translation (again, with the google example).

The second reason is because of Chinese culture- when they move somewhere, they learn to fit in as best they can, and this generally includes learning the language.
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Envinyatar
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Message 110 of 249

06 November 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged

Rikyu-san wrote:

This was a useful eye-opener for me. The Guardian is now translating some of their articles into Chinese!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/chinese

Do you have an idea of how many Chinese newspapers have English versions? Heck, they even have Spanish versions!

People's Daily in Spanish
Another Chinese newspaper in Spanish

Isn't that an eye-opener too?
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Captain Haddock
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Message 111 of 249

07 November 2009 at 9:34am | IP Logged

Choscura wrote:

The second reason is because of Chinese culture- when they move somewhere, they learn to fit in as best they can,
and this generally includes learning the language.

Are you kidding? Chinese people form Chinatowns in practically every city around the world where, unlike other
immigrants, they retain their language and culture.
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Rikyu-san
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Message 112 of 249

07 November 2009 at 10:08am | IP Logged

Envinyatar wrote:

Rikyu-san wrote:

This was a useful eye-opener for me. The Guardian is now translating some of their articles into Chinese!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/chinese

Yes, it is an eye-opener, too, but for a different reason.

Consider this perspective: Danish is a language with relatively few native speakers - less than 6 million of us. If we decide to make English versions of our news papers, the result would be that our news papers would be available to foreigners. This would work as a gateway for foreginers into our country and culture. In other words, it would help the Danes connect to foreigners and help promote Danish views, culture and so on. Something that would be totally inaccessible if you didn't know the language.

If an English newspaper decided to make a Danish version of their news paper, it would signal something else. It would signal that Denmark, Danish culture, Danish business and so on, had risen on the world stage and gained importance. This would never happen for two reasons: one, we are not that important to the English, and two, we can communicate in English already. It would require a very different world for it to happen that the English made a Danish version of their newspapers. Danish as a lingua franca? (*lol*) No, I don't think so.

I think we can compare these examples with what is happening with the Chinese.

The Spanish and English versions of Chinese newspapers allow the Chinese to communicate with the rest of the world with non-Mandarin speakers/readers. It promotes Chinese culture, politics, worldview, business and so on on a massive scale. It opens the door for the rest of the world to China. It is similar to the hundreds of Confucian Institutes that the Chinese have build recently. They want to introduce us to Confucian thought and values.

The Chinese version of the Guardian reflects the growing importance of China and Chinese on the world stage. It has even greater significance that it is done by a newspaper that is writing in the language the we of the West consider the lingua franca. The conclusion is that both the Spanish and English versions of the Chinese newspapers and the Chinese version of the English newspapers shows the relative greater importance of China on the world stage.

Edited by Rikyu-san on 07 November 2009 at 10:10am

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