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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ecroix Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6160 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien, English*, Indonesian Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 153 of 249 24 November 2009 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Maybe my experience in Japan was different from yours. Allow me to share. Yes, they may not have any aversion to Chinese culture, historically. And yes, they are looking for people with Mandarin skills. But it will never reach a stage where the Japanese will openly adopt Chinese as a lingua franca. Although the writing system is mutually intelligible (but increasingly becoming less as the number of loan word increases), Japanese is a very different language, grammatically and phonetically from Mandarin. Some of my Japanese friends (two sararīman and a post-grad student) find learning Mandarin quite difficult other than the discount they get with the writing system and the thousand of quasi-cognates that come with it. The tonal system that makes Mandarin harder for Western ears are the same for Japanese ears. And the borrowed Chinese vocabulary entered Japanese a thousand years ago so their phonetics and meanings have diverged significantly making it less useful. (Interestingly, and totally irrelevant to this discussion, a few Nihonjin have told me Supeingo (Spanish), rather easy to their ears) Anyway, Sino-Japanese relations has always been about rivalry, that's why I believe the probability of Japan openly endorsing Mandarin is very low. Would the US during the Cold War endorse Russkiy as lingua franca since the Soviet block is influential and mighty? Just plain old geo-political pragmatism (and irrational pride) at work; otherwise human beings would be speaking one language since the time of the Tower of Babel. 只是我的两分钱。(Literal translation of an illogical English idiom just for laughs) :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ecroix Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6160 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien, English*, Indonesian Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 154 of 249 24 November 2009 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Agreed. And to extend to further, every language ultimately came from a small village and was spoken by a bunch of barbarians...somewhere in Africa. ;-) Indeed, I never said Mandarin will never be a lingua france because it's some tribal language used by brutes in villages around the Northern Capital. China was way advanced than the rest of the world for thousand of years. But then China regressed technologically after inventing the compass, gunpowder, printing; amongst other useful innovations. It became isolationist (these guys built the largest wall in the world to keep people out, which is telling). Also not surprising considering they named their country, the Middle Kingdom. (The Romans did they same too, calling the area where their empire was as Middle Earth (Mediterranean). But the crucial difference was the Latin based daughter languages that sprung up from Latin continued to acquire words from every culture it met and sometimes conquered (unfortunately). For better or for worse and despite their excesses such as slavery, caste systems and carnage, the Romans never linked Roman citizenship to race. If one spoke like a Roman, be loyal to Rome and most importantly pay taxes, then you are a Roman.The Roman empire’s uniqueness lies in the fact that it ultimately developed into a state with no master race nor domineering ethnic group. The Han majority (or superiority as they see it) in China is rather different. Modern Mandarin is an artificial language of sorts created after formation of the republic to unite the people (China people that is). From many related Chinese dialects, the Beijing dialect with some features of the other dialects were combined to create Pǔtōnghuà (literally Common Speech). Latin on the other hand, was the opposite; Latin mixed with the other languages in the empire, splintered off into dialects and then eventually into the Romance languages. Among the languages from Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian, Japonic family of language families that I have studied, Mandarin (a member of the Sino-Tibetan family) is distinctly isolationist. Which makes it a bad candidate for a neutral and acceptable common language for a globalized world. While English assimilates whatever word it encounters (with Borg-like efficiency for Trekkies out there) without hesitation, Mandarin is one of the few major world languages that hardly ever assimilates foreign words. And the Chinese are fine with it, because they don't have this civilizing urge like the French to push their language down the throats of their colonies. The Han Chinese are simply content to shove their Beijing dialect into the throats of everyone within the confines of their Middle Kingdom. Good for them. :-) The most widely spoken form of English is not even the official language in the country where it is most spoken : USA. The Queen has also no interest to police her language nowadays making English ideally suited to be butchered, transmogrified and remixed by Indians, Jamaicans, Singaporeans, Australians, Malaysians the Japanese or whoever to their heart's content. Look what the Académie française succeeded doing by protecting the purity of their language : rein! So, to cut it short : 1. Modern Mandarin is unlikely to be a global lingua franca not because it's inferior in some way compared to English but because it was DESIGNED (yes, designed by the State, no less) to be a lingua franca for a very culturally homogeneous group of people WITHIN the borders of China. (Li, Miao, Dai and Uyghurs just have to follow along the plan whether they like it or not) 2. The Chinese are fine with Mandarin being just only a regional lingua franca. Begin pragmatic business people they'll learn any language when they need to. They have zero interest in making their language global or force it into others outside their borders; that is more of a Western obsession. 3. The last thing the State wants is for the world to write stuff in perfect Pǔtōnghu, lest the People might get funny ideas from those foreigners. 4. Some Westerners seem to want to make Mandarin into a global lingua franca MORE than the Chinese themselves. Go live in China for a while and you'll understand what I'm talking about. :-) Edited by ecroix on 24 November 2009 at 7:25pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5525 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 155 of 249 24 November 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That was knowledgeable and informative, but I object to the first two points. China is certainly NOT culturally homogenous, and it was much less so when the conquest started.
In fact, I fail to see any real difference between a Chinese tribe that conquers territories and eventually forces them to speak their language, and a bunch of Italians (sort of) doing the same. Or the French in Indo-China for that matter, except the technicality that China is almost contiguous. Actually, the Chinese empire is much more diverse linguistically than any European Empire ever was. There are still over fifty recognised nationalities in China, and some estimate that the real number is more than 400 hundred. They speak dozens of different languages from at least seven language families, write in host of radically different alphabets and other writing systems. And this is after several thousand years of centralising influence (I would say "oppression" if I weren't worried about upsetting anyone). Furthermore, just because Chinese at the moment is happily spared from loanwords to a large extent, that doesn't mean that they couldn't change that policy, or that foreigners couldn't start butchering it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ecroix Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6160 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien, English*, Indonesian Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 156 of 249 24 November 2009 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My friend, I'm aware the fact that China has diverse minorities, in fact the State has even declared some places to be autonomous regions, self-rule by the minorities (in theory). But on the ground the reality is quite different and I have witness it first hand. You probably know about what's happening now in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to the people there who speak a Turkic language. I really hope one day China will be enlightened and open up their language to the world and celebrate their linguistic diversity instead of just tolerating it. But as of this time their goal is language unification within China. One might ask, "So, why do you still say China is not interested to spread their language globally?" To answer that question, allow me to share another insight I got staying in China which may sound controversial and politically incorrect to Western ears but the Chinese themselves happily tell anyone who asks them. The following is what a university professor at a top Chinese university whom I met told me, his words not mine to the best I can recall (translated to English of course for everyone's benefit) : "Chinese civilization is great because of our language. Because of our unique and superior writing system which strengthen one's mind and increases one's intelligence. We believe the the Roman alphabets dulls the mind. That is why pinyin never caught on. Our language unites our people. It is a beautiful gem which only the Chinese people can understand and appreciate." Let me be clear that he was not attacking other languages, just elaborating the Chinese believe that their writing system endows them with certain qualities which other writing systems don't. A lot of Chinese people share this view that knowing Chinese is a competitive advantage and it's best only Chinese, or Han-like people should benefit from using it. They'll happily learn other languages because it's advantageous while retaining the benefit of thinking in Chinese. As you can see, although the world may want to learn Mandarin, China isn't really too keen. Yes, foreigners paying good money to learn Mandarin in state universities are always welcome. But if you ever attend one, what you get is a good lecture in the line of the quote I mentioned earlier on how great Mandarin. It's better just to talk to "real" people on the street than a contrived foreign language class. The amount of time the spend on memorization and writing is astounding. I improved tremendously after stopping class and started to "live" the language. A foreign student coming to learn English in the US, and probably also the UK, will never be constantly reminded how great and difficult English is or how superior it is to other languages and that only the English from England can truly understand English. (which leaves us Americans out of luck) Lack of loan-word not necessarily mean a language cannot become a lingua franca. What I was implying was that it does show the underlying philosophy of the people who speak it; whether they prefer to embrace other cultures or keep their language culturally pure. There nothing wrong being culturally pure, but it's at odds with being culturally neutral, to be acceptable to the widest range of people which is the basic requirement to become a lingua franca. Thanks for a great discussion! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5525 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 157 of 249 24 November 2009 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, English was never culturally neutral. Even if that were possible, it is certainly not a requirement for becoming a lingua franca. In fact, the only languages that could possibly be called culturally neutral in any sense at all are things like Esperanto and Lojban, but they have never reached more than a handful of speakers. All previous lingue franche, from Akkadian to English, have been very embedded in a specific culture.
Also, just because the Chinese state possibly is uninterested in spreading Chinese, that won't necessairly stop it. The spread of English is at least not only down to conscious effort. One could imagine a scenario where Chinese grows in East Asia, because people from poorer countries think that they can get a better life knowing Chinese, and then it could spread further. Perhaps this won't happen until they, if ever, open their doors for mass immigration. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6772 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 158 of 249 25 November 2009 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
To be sure, Mandarin is nearly as hard for Japanese speakers as English. I'll just leave you with one more data point. I saw an advertisement for a local (Japanese) university the other day. They were advertising that 36 courses (or so) of theirs were taught in Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5532 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 159 of 249 25 November 2009 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I read a passage in a wonderful book about how coaching is being practiced in China (with Chinese business people) where they use the Chinese signs as a coaching tool.
The central sign is the sign for the human being and humanity, ren. From that the authors can show their Chinese coaching clients, and people who learn how to coach others, how this sign is also part of the sign for compassion. This exemplifies how the traditional hanzi system is used as a starting point to talk about deep cultural issues, and actually supporting the cultural context in order to solve problems. It is in the book contrasted with a Western more instrumental approach - something that is studied and used in China but that is seen as less desirable and actually unwieldy because of the way the Chinese put human beings center stage. A purely Western approach to management wouldn't work, they say, because of this (and they would probably nok like it if it did work). This is, I think, an argument in favour of Chinese as a language worth studying. In and of itself it doesn't carry any weight in a lingua franca discussion. However, what I like in particular about this passage is how Chinese culture, the Hanzi signs, the Confucian Capitalism, the introduction of Western management techniques and the introduction to coaching can be used as a starting point for a discussion about more deeply felt ways of dealing with the challenges they are facing. They use coaching (in its Western form) to have a quality conversation about issues in Chinese business organizations that respects and honors and explicitly draws upon their cultural heritage in order to develop the individual and the organizations in a more wise way - with a deeply felt cultural, individual, organizational and societal fit. Can English as a language live up to the challenge that such a powerful package is presenting us with? Edited by Rikyu-san on 25 November 2009 at 1:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5525 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 160 of 249 25 November 2009 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, the character for 'bogus' (偽 wèi) also contains the radical 'man'. I don't think that you should make too much of the composition of Chinese characters, as what may now appear as a man may have been something entirely different 3000 years ago that just happen to have a similar shape, or it may be there simply as a phonetic. In this case, it is probably just a semantic determinant.
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