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"Language of the Future" | ||
Tags: Lingua franca | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 25 of 47 13 August 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Predictions can be flawed due to many factors, but I still think that English will continue being the "dominant language" for decades to come. It still has economic importance, and has a considerable cultural weight as well.
Even if China has massive growth right now, it may become stagnant or blow out like has happened many times before with other countries. Some argue that China will be the most economically powerful country in the future - but that was also a popular argument about the Soviet Union several decades ago. Same regarding Japan. Granted, I'm no expert on economics, but basing the "language of the future" on economics alone is not going to be very effective. Spanish will continue being important in much of Latin America, as will Portuguese, thanks to Brazil. Arabic is unlikely to become as important of a language when it comes to business, to be frank. It has massive cultural weight, but...In North African Maghreb countries, Arabic dialects dominate domestic life but when it comes to business, French is still strong. Tunisia is the only country I can think of that has succeeded to a decent extent in "Arabizing" business. In the Gulf countries, Arabic isn't necessary for the petroleum business - English will do there. Of course, Arabic still helps significantly if you're doing something more local and appealing to most of the population (in the Maghreb) or working for something social or environmental-based, but it'll probably be a while before it becomes dominant in the field of international business. As for the Gulf countries, Arabic is spoken by a significant minority of the residents in those countries (if you only count Gulf nationals, the percentage of Arabs in these countries is lower). Don't get me wrong - if you're going to be working or living in an Arab country, Arabic will be a very valuable language to get a grasp on. I've worked in some Arab countries (Tunisia, Jordan, Oman, Egypt, and Jordan) for time spans ranging from three months to a full year, and Arabic was certainly useful for my field of environmental work. However, for international business it's not as necessary in the Maghreb or Gulf states. Furthermore, only time will tell what happens to some of the countries after the Arab Spring. Edited by Jappy58 on 13 August 2012 at 7:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 26 of 47 13 August 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
If the Chinese manage to learn English, why can't westerners learn Mandarin? Are they more stupid? About the economy: China is approaching the USA if we calculate the GDPs in equal prices. China has more potential to develop. It has population with low wages and small debts. About the writing system: I think electronic dictionaries might help. Edited by Марк on 13 August 2012 at 8:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4933 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 27 of 47 13 August 2012 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have understood that there are some approximations that it takes 8 or more years for an average Japanese child to learn to enough Kanji to read and write fluently. Approximately same should apply Chinese child learning to Mandarin as well. How long does it take for an American kid to learn enough alphabet and spelling to read and write? Not very long. In L2 learning this makes a huge difference. Few adults can learn characters for years almost full time like Chinese children. Edited by petteri on 13 August 2012 at 8:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 47 13 August 2012 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's not a question of "stupid". It's a question of costs and incentives. Europe has already figured out how to teach people English: Start early, give them 10 years of classes, and hope they reach B2, and maybe read at C1. Some smaller countries in northern Europe add vast amounts of English media to the mix and manage to produce C1 oral skills on a regular basis. If we go by the FSI numbers, Chinese is probably four times harder than English for somebody who speaks a Romance or a Germanic language. So European schools would need to devote a lot more time to Chinese than they do to English, or get a lot more efficient at teaching languages. Realistically, any kind of decent fluency in Chinese appears to require almost two years of intense, full-time classes, and usually a lot more than that. And taken collectively, the Germanic and Romance languages wield an enormous amount of economic power, much of it in rapidly-developing countries with huge populations. So like I said, I'll believe in Mandarin as a lingua franca when I hear about German and Brazilian business people negotiating in Mandarin. Or when their kids start obsessing over Chinese music, movies and comic books. Right now, this just isn't happening in the West. (Which is probably a good thing for people learning Mandarin— your skills will be in much greater demand.) 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 29 of 47 13 August 2012 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, one thing that English speakers are not aware of is that English is no longer learnt just to speak with
Americans, Englishmen etc. English is a true lingua franca in the sense that Swedes learn English to speak with Frenchmen, Poles, Germans, Arabs, etc. If English was only used to speak with English monoglots it wouldn't have such a strong position, but where I work relatively little business is done with English speakers. There's some business being done in Canada and Australia, but the big clients are in South America and Asia. Yet nobody is even considering learning Spanish or Mandarin. Nobody see the point of it. When everyone involved in any sort of international work speaks English, why would you learn another language? This gives English a big inertia. Latin survived for a millennium after the fall of the Roman Empire, remember? I bet that if the US, Australia, Britain and Canada were swallowed by the earth tomorrow, English would continue to be the lingua franca for quite some time. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Renan.hsa Newbie Brazil Joined 4492 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: English | Message 30 of 47 14 August 2012 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Even though the growth importance of Latin America in the world and the powerful China, I
don’t see English being replaced by any other language at least in the next decades. The popularity of English relates to many factors (economy and culture are the more strongest) and the American way of life still rules what are cool or not. Here in Brazil some bands of forró (characteristic song of the northeast) sing their songs in English! It’s very hard overcome two centuries of popularity and needless to say that English is a very easy language to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4637 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 31 of 47 14 August 2012 at 4:28am | IP Logged | |||||
You really think westerners would learn Mandarin as much as the Chinese learn English? Politically correctness aside, take all of the rumors of arrogance you heard about Americans and apply that thought. Not only your average American, but the corporate Americans. Not too mention how incredibly long and tedious it is for someone whose mother tongue uses the Latin alphabet to learn a language where every word is a character. Let's not forget the tones. How long do you think it would take the corporate world to reach such a high level in Mandarin to conduct business? The Chinese even take this into account I'd imagine. So rather than it being a question of intelligence, think of it as a question of process and time. Edited by sillygoose1 on 14 August 2012 at 4:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 32 of 47 14 August 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged | |||||
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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