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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 49 of 249 20 October 2009 at 5:44am | IP Logged | |||||
In fact「禪宗」(chán-zōng) is a Chinese Buddhist denomination which was largely localised by Chinese prophets (rather than Indian ones), and what's more, usually the Buddhist texts, such as「金剛經」(jīn-gāng-jīng),「心經」(xīn-jīng) ,「壇經」(tán-jīng), were published in both original and modern Chinese editions, last but not least, they're absolutely not pronounced à la japonaise in China. 2 persons have 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 50 of 249 20 October 2009 at 9:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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New perspectives keep coming up in this thread, and I really enjoy it. It seems that only by acquiring a broad perspectives with many nuances may one begint to grasp the various trajectories in our world as it keep changing and developing.
One of the things I have discovered this morning to my big surprise is that the Danish government has now established its second(!) Confucius Institute in Denmark. You can read about the Institute and the plans for the future that also involves language learning on a massive scale. Very relevant if you want to know what is actually already happening and relevant to our discussion. First the link: http://www.ci.aau.dk/Overview+of+Confucius+Institute An excerpt: "Confucius Institute is a non-profit public institute which aims at promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching internationally through affiliated Confucius Institutes. Its headquarters is in Beijing and is under the Office of Chinese Language Council International or Hanban（汉办）.The first Confucius Institute opened on November 21, 2004 in Seoul, Republic of Korea and many more have been established in other countries, such as the U.S., Germany and Sweden, where Chinese enjoys an increasing popularity. Confucius is one of the most representatives of traditional Chinese culture. As of April 2009, there were 328 Confucius Institutes in 82 countries and regions. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China estimates that, by the year 2010, there will be approximately 100 million non-Chinese worldwide learning Chinese as a foreign language, and it plans to set up 500 Confucius Institutes worldwide. The Office aims to establish 1,000 Confucius Institutes by 2020. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5819 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 51 of 249 20 October 2009 at 11:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly. Also, China is the country with the largest population of Buddhist adherents (estimated between 660M and 1000M) according to Wikipedia, although their Buddhism is mixed Chan and Pure Land. Well, Zen Buddhism was popularized by a Japanese in USA so that explains the use of Zen instead of Chan terms, etc in English. But that does not prevent a more authoritative translation of Literary Chinese originals into English or other languages using Chinese terms. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| knadolny Diglot Newbie United States capturingchinese.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5515 days ago 11 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 52 of 249 20 October 2009 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it's China's intent to make Chinese a lengua franca. I don't think it will replace English, but it could definitely complement it. Arabic is another huge language to consider. The British Council came out with a paper called English Next and is a good read.
It discusses who English beat out French (lengua franca is French right?). Nothing is set in stone and already we are seeing more and more Americans studying Chinese. I am one of them and believe it's been helping my professional career a ton. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 53 of 249 20 October 2009 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
20. In Africa. A continent of 1 billion people. Uh-huh. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5987 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 54 of 249 21 October 2009 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I must state again my amusement at how some of the native English speakers here just keep insisting on how easy English is, and how hard chinese is. Try to understand how silly it seems to keep insisting that your native language is "easy". you have no perspective! saying it over and over doesn't make it true.
I firmly believe that the biggest hurdle for English speakers learning chinese is vocabulary, since there are no words in common, or even similar. This would still be true regardless of the perceived difficulties of the writing system. Try thinking for a moment about how hard it is for chinese speakers to learn English. It's hard for me to guage (as a native English speaker), but i'd guess that it's just as hard for chinese speakers to learn English as it is for us to learn chinese, again due to the vocabulary difference. Chinese's difficult writing and extremely easy grammar are balanced by English's idiotic spelling and moderately difficult grammar and pronunciation. english is not currently dominant because it's "easy". a) it's not easy (generally speaking), and b) people predominantly learn it for financial and cultural reasons. I don't necessarily believe that chinese will become a world-dominant language, but i also reject claims that "it won't happen because chinese is hard", and i point to English as a counterexample. The debate over whether the chinese language becomes a lingua franca is a debate about world events, not about perceived difficulty. thanks for listening, i'll try not to rant too much ;) 13 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5515 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German | Message 55 of 249 21 October 2009 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're not ranting, doviende, I agree with you about that.
I LOVE English, don't get me wrong ;) but... English natives just always expect us non-natives to speak their language. They don't appreciate the problems with learning English because the majority of them never had to learn a foreign language, or not to an advanced level. English spelling is a bl**dy nightmare. The grammar's not bad for Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch but I think it would be very difficult for Asians. It's a very idiomatic language and idioms are as hard as hell to know. That said I LOVE English, no hard feelings eh? xxx EDIT: changed "Ur" to "You're" Edited by Keith on 22 October 2009 at 1:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Matteo Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5581 days ago 88 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: ItalianB1, German | Message 56 of 249 22 October 2009 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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English is perfect!
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