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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6373 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 185 of 249 09 November 2010 at 4:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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If China does become the number one country in the world the short answer is no, the
long answer is probably yes. What I mean is not anytime soon; most probably not within our lifetime. Perhaps one day over time as people who speak English as a second language die out and the new generation sees an advantage to learning Chinese the switch will be made. It happened to French and Latin but it happened slowly. Latin still has an influence today and Latin was still used a lot for centuries after the fall of Rome. It's a slow transition over many decades if not centuries. It's not something that happens quickly. The information age and globalization serves to speed the process up somewhat though. Most of the internet is in English. It's the language of international business, science, technology and aviation. More people speak English as a second language than any other. USA will still be powerful for a while as it slowly winds down over the next century. The best movies in the world are produced in America and use English. China won't be comparable to the USA in terms of per capita wealth until 2050. These are the factors that make English advantageous to learn even without the USA. There was a time however when all that was true of French or Latin. Chinese is difficult to learn but they may reform the writing system to use less characters and maybe have something similar to Japanese or they may switch to a romanized script. Even if they don't, English is difficult to learn. Its spelling is illogical and confusing. People still learn it. Where there is a will, there is a way. Many people from all over the world learn Chinese to a high level. It's a challenge (as is any language) but not as impossible as it's made out to be. For a while, people may opt to learn both Chinese and English as they begin to have the same advantages for learning them. Finally, English is the first and only truly global language. It's a super lingua franca the likes of which we've never seen. It's hard to tell what will happen to it when the USA declines as the world super power and other countries become more influential. Edited by zerothinking on 09 November 2010 at 4:27am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 186 of 249 09 November 2010 at 8:34am | IP Logged | |||||
The Communist Party had done what you mention but they found out latinisation of "Chinese" doesn't work at all. Mandarin is disyllable because it has too many homophones, as a result of lacking vowels and tones. If there were no Chinese character at all, a combination would give false interpretations. Vietnamese has many tones and many vowels but latinisation brings comprehension problem. I've friends (Chinese) who studied Vietnamese and they said when they were given a Vietnamese paragraph, everybody just gave different interpretations. I heard that Korean has comprehension problems because of homophones after abandoning Chinese character. That's the reason why Japanese can't get rid of Kanji too, Simplified Character poses problem too. While ancient Chinese people simplified many pictographs, many characters were actually made more complicated to deal with the increasing complexity of the society so that misunderstanding can be avoided. However, this government go all the way backward and simplifies characters that Chinese ancestors felt that they needed to clarity by complicating them. I don't against the natural process of making scripts more simple but nowadays simplify character isn't really THAT simplified and messes up meanings. Besides, society gets more and more complicated but characters get too simplified that it becomes confusing. It is more like a mind control by the government. And finally, Chinese character is the essence of Chinese culture. Why give it up for foreigners? Edited by jeeb on 09 November 2010 at 9:07am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dissident Newbie United States Joined 5313 days ago 37 posts - 43 votes | Message 187 of 249 10 November 2010 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Intelligent people have the ability to anticipate. One doesn't need to wait for China to become number 1 to start studying Chinese. My high school friend ( who is Russian like me ) learned Chinese at Yale about 10 years ago when there was barely any talk about China in the mainstream media, but at Yale university they were apparently already preparing students for the rise of China. I am still upset that he got a 10 years head start on me but as they say better late then never. By the time China is number 1 ( which if the Chinese housing bubble doesn't burst will happen in the next 5 to 10 years ) all the smart people will already know Chinese regardless of whether they live in US, France or Germany. 10 years ago you had to be an economist to understand where things are going. Today you have to be deaf and blind not to. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dissident Newbie United States Joined 5313 days ago 37 posts - 43 votes | Message 188 of 249 10 November 2010 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think there should be characters for the most commonly used single syllable words such as: I, me, you, he, do, be, have, come, go, must, yes, no, eat, sleep, rest, work, etc. Everything else should be handled by a phonetic script. In other words the most commonly used words should be allowed to have their pronunciation and "spelling" or calligraphy develop separately so that each can be optimized for maximum efficiency. Nobody should be forced to read commonly used words like "you" or "come" exactly as they are written - that would make speech too slow and inefficient. And vice versa i don't see any reason to write 5 letters for something which could probably be represented by a character composed of 3 strokes. On the other hand to remember separate spelling / calligraphy and pronunciation for ALL words is a waste of memory. And using characters to represent foreign names is downright ugly. On some level constructed languages seem to recognize the complexity of natural language. Unfortunately this complexity cannot be simplified before we can understand it. And if we could do that it would imply it isn't that complex after all and doesn't need to be simplified. This is why all constructed languages are failures. Constructing languages is an exercise in arrogance - it is fundamentally about criticizing something you don't understand. Information technology, data mining, artificial intelligence and neuroscience are advancing fast however. It is likely that in the future we will have the means to construct a language that will be superior to natural ones. It is also likely of course that AI will surpass human intelligence altogether in the future. What some people probably don't recognize is that the two challenges are roughly equal in magnitude. Edited by dissident on 10 November 2010 at 6:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 189 of 249 11 November 2010 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I don't know if Vietnamese and Korean should go back to/keep using characters because they are too confusing without them. Shouldn't the language governing bodies of Vietnamese and Korean try to reduce the homophones from the vocabulary instead? But I agree that the Chinese shouldn't give up the characters just to suck up to foreigners. Edited by chucknorrisman on 11 November 2010 at 2:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| theguller Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5321 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, Mandarin, English, Italian | Message 190 of 249 11 November 2010 at 3:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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with over 24 pages, a number of users has cited most of the real factors that will assure that mandarin will never be the number one language. And the reason is too simple: chinese languages will never be popular due to its natural difficulties on learning (except for some closed networks and enthusiasts). English is way easier and the anglo-american influence over the entire globe is way deeper. not too many people feel encouraged to learn such a complex language rather than just mastering a very accessible one like English. the time required to become fluent is also very constrasting. Mandarin is a decade-long challenge to achieve a pretty good fluency. Edited by theguller on 11 November 2010 at 3:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 191 of 249 12 November 2010 at 9:56am | IP Logged | |||||
You don't know Chinese culture enough. Personal pronouns can be dropped in Chinese languages. In the past, Chinese didn't use pronouns like "you"or "I/me" most of the time. Even today, if you want to be polite, you have to call by title . Some women even refer themselves as "other people" sometimes. I remember I read something like westerner hate people who refer themselves by their first names. I can't imagine if they see someone who refer oneself as "other people". You can't just project your belief and value onto another language. That's why you can't replace a Chinese person even if you speak Mandarin. Not even Chinese understand each other and the hatred is great. And "no" is a western culture. Direct rejection is a rude act and usually people reject by saying yes. "be" isn't necessary in Chinese languages. Chinese character is the most efficient for East Asian languages. 
Green and orange is Japanese where green is Japanese reading and orange is Kanji. White is Cantonese with Chinese character and its romanisation. It will be a disaster for Japanese if they dump Chinese character totally. 1. trachea 2. organ 3. period 4. deparment Japanese write all these four as "kikan". Even for Cantonese with more vowels, "organ" and "trachea" are written with same romanisation. (That means they are just differentiate by tone) The tone mark is so hard to see in publication. You can see the problem. In Mandarin with pinyin, the tone mark is just to small. 1. qì guǎn 2. qì guān 3. qī jiān 4. jī guān Don't learn any Chinese language if you think Chinese character is complex. Just speak English. Nowadays Chinese people dump lots of money on English learning. Edited by jeeb on 12 November 2010 at 10:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 192 of 249 12 November 2010 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||
"reduce the homophones from the vocabulary instead" This is like getting rid of the French words in English. But China is too big that Korean and Vietnamese both feel threatened by Chinese. I don't know if they want to use Chinese character again. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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