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Chinese will rule the World Wide Web | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4866 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 89 of 121 10 August 2011 at 5:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
But did it spread among peoples who were already familiar with tonal languages? I have a hard time believing users of non-tonal languages would find anything easy about "phonetically simpler Mandarin".
I think that both precise and concise enter into the equation. If so many concepts are all subsumed in one word how can you increase precision except by circumloction, which, of course, is no longer so concise. As for achieving precision idiomatically, I fear this might be something like "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" where the idiom has no meaning outside a specific cultural context. Either that, or it increases the burden on the learner by requiring memorization of (how many?) such idioms.
I agree that the Chinese writing system was, in its time, a wonderful and beautiful achievement. It is still valuable for its artistic merits. But I don't think it is well adapted to the digital world of the future. I think linguistic evolution will cause it to fall out of use in favor of easier to learn systems, for the simple reason that in addition to fitness, Darwinian survival in the wild depends on the ability to propagate. A writing system that is so hard to propagate simply won't spread as fast as one that is easy to propagate. Of course I may be wrong for either or both of two reasons: 1) I really know nothing about Chinese, and 2) I can't foresee the future. --gary 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 90 of 121 10 August 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
I'll never understand this obsession with the tonal aspect. English speakers use tones all the time. In fact, you ought to have just—silently in your head, presumably—pronounced that previous italicized "all" with one of the four basic Mandarin tones. And this? Well, you probably pronounced that previous "this" with another one of the four basic Mandarin tones. Ever gone to a dentist and vocalized with your mouth wide open, or asked, "Reaaaally?" in disbelief? Well, then those are the two final tones, and you're all set!
In practice, you'll find that Chinese is every bit as concise as English. Consider it the difference between English's lack of verb conjugation relative to Spanish. English speakers hardly feel like they're missing out on anything because "you", "I", and "we" all perform the same verb.
I think we can all agree there's a crapload of idiomatic usage in the English language. Not a load of crap of idiomatic usage, but a crapload of it.
I don't know about "the future", but there are 510 million Chinese Internet users who find it perfectly suitable for today. ************************************* On an interesting note unrelated to the above, the website that the threadstarter originally cited has just recently been updated! Back when this thread was first made, the most recent data, as of mid-2010, revealed that there were 444.9 million Chinese-language Internet users, compared to 536.6 million English-language Internet users. Well, as of May 2011 (not published until just recently), there are 510.0 million Chinese-language Internet users, and 565.0 million English-language Internet users, meaning the gap has narrowed from 92 million down to 55 million. Put another way, Chinese-language Internet users grew by 65.1 million over the past year, while English-language Internet users grew by 28.4 million over the same time period. To further put it into perspective, Spanish—the third-most used language on the Internet and the language most typically offered as a suitable competitor against Chinese—has 165.0 million Internet users. As for countries, China now has 485 million Internet users, which is 40.8 million more than the next three (US, India, Japan) combined. Alternatively, China added 65 million Internet users over the past year alone, while the United States added 5 million over the same period. And it still has only a 36.3% penetration rate... Edited by nway on 10 August 2011 at 7:31am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Dixon Groupie Canada Joined 6052 days ago 54 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* | Message 91 of 121 11 August 2011 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I wonder what all the talk of economy matters for an individual learning a language. I
don't see many millionaires and billionaires who had to learn another language as an adult in order to make their money. If you think the Chinese economy is going to do well, buy some equities over there. If you think the American economy is going to do well, buy some equities over there. That takes much less time and effort and will probably earn you more money than spending a couple thousand hours on the language. If you have a valuable product or service to offer to the Chinese market, you can more than likely just have your materials translated for cheap because there are many bilingual English-Chinese speakers out there. If you want to make money off the Chinese economy, study some financial sheets and prospectuses, not characters and radicals. The other thing is that major demographic changes happen slowly, so even if Chinese will become the lingua franca it will be at the very tail end of your life. People don't learn languages to fluency as adults (present company excepted). It takes a whole generation of kids learning a language from childhood for there to be any major changes. Currently, most Americans and Europeans are not hiring Chinese nannies. Therefore you shouldn't expect the next generation to be fluent in Mandarin. Maybe the generation after that you'll get some changes, but by then you'll be old and you will have come to realize that it's probably just best to learn whatever language piques your personal interests and desires. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5192 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 92 of 121 11 August 2011 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
However, not all language learners have the resources to invest in such macroscopic plays. For instance a lot of people in the Americas are learning English, not primarily because they love the language, but because it can help them secure a job and provide them a living *right now*. In the case of China, lots of people in northern Vietnam are learning Chinese so that they can cross the border daily and work in Chinese factories. Again, while learning Chinese isn't some path to riches, it does provide access to making a living. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Dixon Groupie Canada Joined 6052 days ago 54 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* | Message 93 of 121 12 August 2011 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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My post was intended to address members of this forum who are debating this subject on
the internet through their computers, not migrant Vietnamese factory workers. It is much faster to learn how to invest, or learn XYZ money making skill to earn money, than to learn English and be without a skill that consumers want because you spent that time learning languages. That is assuming you live in a free capitalist country where prosperity is possible. Some people have to move out of dictatorships, and thus learn a new language when they immigrate. Edited by Dixon on 12 August 2011 at 12:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5409 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 94 of 121 12 August 2011 at 4:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
And among those native Chinese language internet users, many of them (in extremely increasing numbers) can also communicate in English as well, while amongst the native English language users close to 0% of them can communicate in Chinese. Does being a lingua franca require people from different countries and cultures to learn that language or not? It seems you are desperately avoiding this issue. Except for people born into a related culture, almost NO ONE is learning Chinese. Without throwing out their characters, it will never happen. If a freakish population boom in the U.S. suddenly causes our population to balloon up to 50 TRILLION people, all of them native-born English speakers, that alone would not make English a lingua franca. To be considered such you would still need people IN OTHER NATIONS to learn the language. Lingua Franca - A MEDIUM of communication between peoples of DIFFERENT languages. With almost no native English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc, speakers of Chinese, it means Chinese has made almost no progress as a lingua franca whatsoever. Their biggest move happened when neighboring countries like Japan had no alphabet and copied the Chinese one, but it's been downhill in the lingua franca department ever since (and even in Japan probably most of them could handle pure Romaji and it is not pure chance that katakana use based on foreign words is on steroids nowadays. Katakana is phonetic). Edited by Sandman on 12 August 2011 at 5:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 95 of 121 12 August 2011 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Huh? No one is saying Chinese is a lingua franca NOW. Is this a joke?
The same could be said of English prior to the preeminence of the British Empire — let's try having a little historical perspective here, eh?
Classical Chinese already WAS the lingua franca of East Asia for centuries. But surely Classical Chinese must have used romanization — after all, learning characters is something only Chinese can do. It must be in Chinese people's genes, or something... And to think, Chinese's status as the lingua franca of East Asia only ended due to rising European economic and political influence in the region, while China suffered from economic stagnation, political ineptitude, anti-government populist movements, and a population hooked on drugs. (Hm, that doesn't sound familiar at all...)
No one is surmising the ascendency of Mandarin due to its number of speakers alone. Otherwise, we'd also be talking about the "inevitable rise" of Hindustani. Clearly that's not the case, and there's more to the case for Mandarin than that. Feel free to read through the past twelve pages to see what that is...
Uh...hate to burst your bubble, but...
*Source* Edited by nway on 12 August 2011 at 6:10am 2 persons have 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 96 of 121 12 August 2011 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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It seems pretty clear to me that we are inexorably moving towards a situation where China has the population, the money and the technology to create a section of or alternative to the internet which is equal in size to the one dominated by English and users in Anglophone countries. I guess that the problem with the writing will be solved through technology, and what will then happen? When will the Asian countries begin to use the 'Chinese' intenet more than the 'American/European' internet? There is no risk that the part of the internet we are using here at HTLAL by writing in English will crumble and fall to pieces - far too many people can read it, and far too much interesting stuff is avaible there. But we could see a duopole evolving, and that could happen within a limited period. After all a large percentage of the Asian population is young, and if the governments over there see the American economy and the Eurozone falling apart they might decide to change their focus. The one thing that could prevent this from happening is a maoist revolution in China, but I don't see that coming.
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