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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| agimcomas Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 6460 days ago 69 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Portuguese, German Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 57 of 249 22 October 2009 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||
It is one of the answers that I agree the most with. The world focus is shifting to Asia (not only China), and this means that the languages that people will learn in the future are those that people use in Asia, i.e. 1. Mandarin Chinese, because of its already earned status as a lingua franca across the PRC, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and other countries., and 2, English, because of its widespread use in Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and India. Therefore, my forecast is that people will continue to learn English, and English will remain a lingua franca across regions of the world, but we will see an emerging role of the use of Mandarin Chinese in the world. I think these two languages will become the world´s languages, and of course languages like Spanish will remain the common languages of their respective regions. But as Asia becomes more and more important, mre people in the West will choose to learn Mandarin over, say, German. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cameroncrc Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6518 days ago 195 posts - 185 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Ukrainian | Message 58 of 249 22 October 2009 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's because so many non-natives DO speak English. Native English speakers are well accommodated for in other countries, signs are often in English, tours are offered in English, English tv shows and movies appear on TV...it's hard not to find English speakers in other countries, especially European countries. But about Chinese becoming the lingua franca, I would be afraid if that happened. I think that people would give up on learning the difficult script and it would be used less and less. 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 59 of 249 22 October 2009 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I doubt it. The writing system is too difficult and so is the pronunciation. It is very hard for adult speakers to learn the different tones. Plus it's only spoken in one area of the world. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 60 of 249 22 October 2009 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
It seems to me that everywhere I've ever gone, there were Chinatowns and flourishing business communities that spoke Chinese. Even in Canada where I'm from, there are places that are more than 50% Chinese-speaking. The rate at which China is "colonizing" Africa (economically, not militarily) is also something to watch. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5766 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 61 of 249 22 October 2009 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Try to read 无门关, it works only with a translation to me. (in English or Japanese) And I read 左传 almost flawlessly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 62 of 249 22 October 2009 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You don't need to learn the Chinese signs in the future. You just buy a handheld gadget that can read a Chinese text and transcribe it into pinyin or read it aloud. The other way you either speak into the gadget or write a sketch in pinyin which is then transcribed and shown on a screen or printed. The tones will still be there, and maybe the Chinese will still have to learn the fine art of calligraphy, but the writing will not be as big a problem as it is now. Edited by Iversen on 22 October 2009 at 2:10pm 2 persons have 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 63 of 249 22 October 2009 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would have to disagree with this last post. If you want to learn Chinese, you have to learn the Chinese script. There are no shortcuts that technology will provide in the future. If you choose to neglect the characters in your studies then you will remain at an elementary school, middle school level. Too many words in advanced vocabulary depend on the characters since there are so many homonyms. I suppose you could figure it out, but I've had class mates who didn't study the characters and they talked like a ten year old where I continued to get better.
Whether Chinese becomes a lengua franca depends mostly on the Chinese. If you look at their past, all the cultures they came into contact became Sinofied. The Mongols took over the country for how many hundreds of years and yet still kept Chinese characters and took so many Chinese traditions. (the mongols native language does not use characters) China is a place that draws you in and blends you into becoming more Chinese. The characters are a big part why China remained unified while the Roman empire broke up into separate states. As more research goes to China and more great novels, reports, and studies are written in Chinese I believe more Americans and others will be prompted to learn the language. English is a difficult language especially to non-natives. Imagine memorizing how to pronounce "tomb", "comb", and "bomb". They all look the same but are pronounced completely differently. English has roots in so many different languages that it has a lot of strange pronunciations. Chinese is similar in coming from a long history and I would argue harder. There are more idioms and the grammar at advanced levels gets quite difficult. Chinese is easier to pick up at the beginning, but at the end is harder than English. Granted, English is still harder than most other languages. 1 person has 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 64 of 249 22 October 2009 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you're generalizing too much. I found the tones easy when i learned them. From my observations of hundreds of other students trying to learn chinese in a classroom setting, i really think they were lacking the required hours of listening. I did many more hours of listening than they did, so the tones just felt easy to me. then when i listened to what i was saying, i knew whether it was wrong or mostly correct. I think this is the same story with learners of any language's pronunciation. It's not specific to chinese. If you don't listen to the language, you're going to have trouble pronouncing it properly. Also, chinese is not just spoken in one section of the world. I live in Vancouver, Canada, and i started learning chinese specifically because there were so many people speaking it around me everywhere i went. There are chinese signs on businesses all over Vancouver. In my neighbourhood, there are more native speakers of chinese languages than there are native speakers of English. Although Canada is officially bilingual in English and French, there are almost no native french speakers in Vancouver, but there are hundreds of thousands of native chinese speakers. and i'll say it again, people don't learn the "lingua franca" because it's easy or because it's a hobby. They learn it for economic and cultural reasons....because they want or need to communicate with others. a "lingua franca" doesn't become dominant because it is easy...it happens because of political, economic, and social factors. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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