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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3640 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 1 of 28 08 January 2015 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Why Spanish and not Mandarin makes global sense?
A fascinating new study - read the whole study if interested by following the link provided in the article. Spanish, German and French truly deserve the name 'global', according to the study. Mandarin and Arabic, despite their popularity, were found to be rather peripheral and limited on global scale. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/18/why-learning-s panish-not-mandarin-best- way- globalise-your-ideas Edited by rodrigoau on 08 January 2015 at 11:24am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arthaey Groupie United States arthaey.com Joined 5052 days ago 97 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 28 08 January 2015 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fascinating!
Here's the link to the full text of the study: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/E5616.full.pdf 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 3 of 28 08 January 2015 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I may be missing the point here, but isn't the author basically saying that because people in developed western
countries (Lots of book-publishing and internet activity) are already more likely to study (And thus learn) the languages of other developed western countries, people are better off studying these languages? This reasoning is at best completely circular, at worst it deliberately ignores the fact that if you want to "globalize your ideas", the only way to do so would would be to get OUT of the already well-worn English-French-Spanish-German track. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arthaey Groupie United States arthaey.com Joined 5052 days ago 97 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 28 08 January 2015 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The graphs show which languages are the "gatekeeper" ones to get "out of the already well-worn English-
French-Spanish-German track". For example, look at how Russian is the way to open up something for translation into other languages that otherwise aren't connected to English. The connections are not surprising, but I do like the data-driven graphs showing exactly what they are. Edit: "kabguages"? Autocorrect, go home, you are drunk! ;)] Edited by Arthaey on 08 January 2015 at 4:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3640 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 5 of 28 09 January 2015 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I did find it interesting how their method predicted with 'unusual for social sciences' high level of accuracy the number of famous people from a certain language area. If you open the SI Appendix, on p.20 you can see the number of famous people from a certain country, and then by way of deduction, from a certain language background.
China has 94 'famous people' in total. By famous, anyone who matters is included (i.e. people with articles in Wikipedia translated in at least 26 languages): artists, scientists, writers, poets, movie and pop stars, musicians, philosophers, politicians etc. This is extremely low considering its population (compare France with 857, Italy with 793 or Germany with 740 (not to mention UK with 1,140). I think the number of people that the world knows and recognizes does have to do with the political, social, cultural, etc. influence of that country, and by way of deduction, the language in which those people think and create. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5772 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 28 09 January 2015 at 7:08am | IP Logged | |||||
I was quite surprised when I couldn't find a Chinese teacher of one of the most important founders of Japanese Buddhism in any of the Western wikis, when I can find current people with one day of local fame in German and English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3640 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 7 of 28 09 January 2015 at 8:22am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, but you forget the test is that that person should have an article in AT LEAST 25 OTHER languages apart from English or German in order to qualify for inclusion in the total number. Let's say I write an article about a local person in English - will the Wikipedias in another 25 languages follow suit and write an article about the same person? Impossible, unless that person is of truly global significance in some way. Not even if I bribe the editors of the other language wikis. No matter how important that Chinese teacher that you are referring to might be for a certain group of people, the fact is the rest of the world does not find him important. That is why it is a question about global significance. It is a fact that China lacks those people with scientific, artistic, cultural, social , philosophical etc. weight on GLOBAL level. Even countries like Ukraine and Turkey scored better than China in that respect (which one would expect them to be much more peripheral). Yes, I know it is a communist society where individualism is stifled, but that's a question for another debate. Edited by rodrigoau on 09 January 2015 at 8:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 8 of 28 09 January 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rodrigau: Even that scale is specifically skewed against countries like China and in favour of European and Western
nations though. The European Union has only 500 million people, but 24 official languages, and close relations with neighbouring but non-member countries like Turkey and Ukraine. China has nearly 1.4 billion people, but only one language official over its entire territory*. Hell, all of East Asia has something like 1.6 billion people, but only 3 or 4 official languages, depending on one's definition of the region. The effect of this is that someone who's very influential within East Asia might have a major influence on like 2 billion people, but not be considered to warrant interest outside the East Asian languages, like the person Bao mentioned, or maybe if they're really lucky a couple of the major western languages. On the other hand, some minor politician in the EU whose influence might extend over 500 million people, at most, could easily have articles in dozens of languages. But because Europe happens to be fragmented linguistically, according to this scale that politician's language is more "global". I'm not saying that they scales the article mentions aren't important things to consider, but it's basically handpicking criteria which are going to favour European languages and ignoring anything else. *China does have several regional languages, some spoken by tens of millions of people, but in these regions Mandarin is still the dominant language, generally. Edited by Cthulhu on 09 January 2015 at 2:42pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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