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The most spoken language in 2050 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 49 of 115 14 January 2015 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was learning Mandarin as a teenager, some who already knew the language as
spoken but not as written (why the hell they were in a Mandarin class although they spoke it everyday at home and not taking a different language is still beyond me, although I have a feeling that it was to gain high marks easily), would just use the pinyin system to write outside of class if they were not good at characters. I think that the pinyin system was kind of made for some purpose like this, and actually it would be quite easier for those who use the Latin alfabeto if Mandarin converted into a Latin alphabet, like Turkish, or some parts of the Uyghur-speaking population, because honestly Mandarin grammar is very simple, especially in comparison to something like German or Italian. I still think though that Mandarin characters and its difficulty is way overrated. I learnt characters by using a character book, a book with squares on a 10x10 or 12x12 matrix for repetition by writing that I used to do everyday as com[ulssoru homework. Just committed to memory, is nothing more difficult than remembering something like d/dx(sin x) = cos x. I can still write characters and read a Chinese newspaper despite leaving any study of Mandarin since 2007, and I can do it spontaneously without effort, because repetition and practise in the past made it stick for me. I also consider Spanish to be the easiest Indo-European language after English, as the latter is simplified beyond recognition, and the former simply seems generally too logical to go wrong, but that is subjective. I still adhere to my prediction however, that Spanish shall engulf the Western World as the future lingua franca and business language, whilst Mandarin engulfs the region in the general vicinity of the PRC in the future, and that eventually Spanish and Mandarin dominate cocurrently, with Spanish and Mandarin merging into a shared lingua franca internationally. I have members of my family, who are sending their children to immersion Spanish and Mandarin schools (not language schools, but rather full immersion primary and secondary school-type programmes) because they tell me that these two are the languages of the future, in terms of business, military, media, geopolitics, etc. I tend to agree with them, as most of them are no native speakers of either. Perhaps it is too much anecdotal, but I also see not from only my own expereinces, but also in general from what I see on the news, television shows, etc. that Spanish speakers have a much higher ratio of those who refuse to learn English and would be happy to have Spanish replace English as a lingua franca than those who are happy to learn English. The refusal to learn English should also be considered for possible candidate languages for lingua franca. In Scandinavia, people are quite happy to embrace Anglophone, especially British and American media and culture, and use English as if it were their own language. From my expereinces and from what I see on the news and television, countries like Spain, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Perú, and so forth, there is no way, in the high high hell, that this phenomenon would ever happen. There are historical reasons, but there is also a view that is hard to reject: If Anglophones and those who like English want to spread it all over, why the hell not Spanish too? Why not just refuse to learn English and make my Spanish compete with English? Edited by 1e4e6 on 14 January 2015 at 4:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 50 of 115 14 January 2015 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||
Someone could have fun with this as a conlang. Not exactly a common process historically, but I guess it's not impossible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 51 of 115 14 January 2015 at 4:56am | IP Logged | ||
Having lived for several years in both Mexico and Spain, I can tell you that this is not a common attitude, at least in those places. Most wish they knew English better than the minimal language instruction that they've received has provided. There are also indeed several places here in the US where a monolingual Spanish speaker can get by just fine without any English, albeit geographically limited to certain neighborhoods, but would like to speak English better. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 52 of 115 14 January 2015 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||
Speakers of Chinese languages are pretty unique in the wold in the high ratio of educated native speakers born abroad who can't read or write. Not to mention that even university-educated native speakers have trouble writing with a pen and paper. Ask any Chinese person to write the three words 咳嗽, 喷嚏, 打嗝 (cough, sneeze, belch) on a piece of paper without looking them up, and the percentage who can do it is in the single digits. These are not rare words. And stories of educated Chinese who move abroad and start finding it difficult to read in Mandarin are not that uncommon, either. Personally I spend half an hour a day working through my deck of Chinese characers, just to keep them in my memory. You might not have trouble with them, but most people do. They are several orders of magnitude more difficult than phonetic systems, even for native speakers. How much time do Mandarin speakers spend learning pinyin compared to the characters? And yet it's not uncommon to see people replacing a character with the pinyin when writing handwritten notes, because they can't remember the character. But again, this is probably not a hugely important factor when it comes to lingua franca-ness, as Chinese languages have demonstrated several times in history. And English, too, having arguably the most difficult orthography in the word amongst alphabetical writing systems. The Americans and the Chinese are the only two peoples I'm aware of who hold competitions in being able to write. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 53 of 115 14 January 2015 at 10:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I remember clearly in Mandarin class that we learnt the entire
field, simplified, traditional, and pinyin, and drilled writing characters every night for homework, and tests included not just writing charactera, but rather writin full sentences using the vocabulary, both in pinyin and characters. If I as a native Anglophone found this manageable, and even quite fun, I am sure that other speakers of other languages that fall in the realm of the PRC can do better than I did, especially given that I started Mandarin as a 13 year old with only one year of Spanish before as foreign language experience. And having lived in two of the Western cities with the largest Chinese diasporas in the West, San Francisco and Manchester, I see characters in restaurants, signs, newspapers, so there mist be some sort of demand such that some know the cgaracteraat least passively. But using pinyin would probably make it easier still for IE speakers, the tones are nowhere as complicated like the 8 toned Fukien (Minnanhua, or Banlamgu), for example, or Hue dialect of Vietnamese. Spanish however I see spreading much faster in the Western Hemisphere. Latin America are so rich in natural resources but were never given a chance to use them for themselves without foreign intervention. Now however they have the chance. And I think that this shall propel Spanish dramatically. Not sure if this is totally important, vut PRC and Latin America also have some of the highest birth rates as well to add to their massive populations, which can only mean more speakers for those two. Edited by 1e4e6 on 14 January 2015 at 10:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 54 of 115 14 January 2015 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Two things I'm curious about when it comes to lingua francas in the future:
1: As Spanish grows in popularity and acceptance in the US, and American companies increasingly cater TV and movies to hispanophones, will this affect the popularity of Spanish worldwide? Spanish already pops up here and there in American TV shows, and I suspect the growing popularity of Spanish in Sweden is somewhat related to the coolness factor given to the language through these shows. 2: What will happen to English in the EU if Great Britain leaves? UKIP is gaining ground and Cameron has promised to hold a referendum on membership if he wins the next election. If GB leaves the EU, Ireland will be he only EU country with English as the official language. Will this decrese the role of English as a language of the EU? Will French and German occupy the lost territory? And if that happens in the halls of Brussels, will this at all affect the population at large? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chiara-sai Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3707 days ago 54 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German, Japanese | Message 55 of 115 14 January 2015 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
1: The largest ethnic group in the USA is Germans, and yet German is not even remotely challenging the status of English in the country and in the world, so I wonder if the same will happen with Spanish. 2: I suspect that the role of English in Europe has much more to do with American hegemony than with Britain being part of the EU, so I doubt brexit would affect it. Edited by chiara-sai on 14 January 2015 at 12:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4638 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 56 of 115 14 January 2015 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
If you look at the history of the EU, in the beginning with the six continental member states, French was all dominant as a working language. After the accession of the UK and Ireland together with Denmark in 1972, English started to rival French as a working language, then with the subsequent accession of Sweden and Finland, and finally the big 2004 accession of Poland, Hungary etc., English has taken over as the dominant working language. Therefore, even if the UK would leave the EU, I am convinced that English will still be the main working language of the institutions. The presence of the Nordic countris and the "new and not-so-new" member states from Central and Eastern Europe will ensure that English maintains its position, because the huge majority of staff in the institutions from these countries, as well as government representatives and experts going to meetings, will have English as their second language (and in most cases probably do not know German or French). Edited by Ogrim on 14 January 2015 at 12:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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