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Chinese will rule the World Wide Web | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5529 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 25 of 121 16 July 2011 at 10:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The dollar system virtually collapsed in 2008 and has been on life support ever since. 10-20 TRILLION dollars have been injected into the system, but still the problems persist, with no end in sight. It will, alas, only get worse.
However, the Chinese - ordinary citizens - have got the gold. For years, the Chinese government has encouraged the population to buy gold as a hedge against troubled times. I believe the Chinese have studied - and regularly copy, yes - things carefully in order to make their own version of it, either windmills, maglev trains or even monetary systems - and may have known something about the inevitabile crash of our current system and asked the population to protect themselves. For those of you with time on your hands, take a look at these two posts. You may learn a thing or two. However, it is up to you to connect the dots: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/07/euro-gold.html http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/04/big-gap-in-understanding-w eakens.html Edited by Rikyu-san on 16 July 2011 at 10:10am 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 26 of 121 16 July 2011 at 11:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I tend to side with those that see a brighter future for China (and several other countries in Asia) than for Europe and North America. Right now the economic side of the question is quite evident: the USA is living on loans from China and (to some extent) the Middle East, and the battle between Obama and the Republicans just now just illustrates how fundamentally rotten the American economy is. And the European one is worse: the big question is when the Germans lose patience with the Mediterranean countries and decide that the Euro has to go. And then all Hell breaks loose.
In contrast the Chinese economy is so strong that the biggest problem over there is to keep growth within reasonable bounds. And their attitude to democracy and social equality (and copyright!) is not a weakness in this respect - you won't see the Chinese leaders pleading with the opposition, like Obama has to do now. Unless the sinister spirit of Mao decides to raise from the grave and instigate a new Leap Forward or a Cultural Revolution, China is bound to continue to grow at least for the time it takes to become the largest economy in the world. So Asia with China at the front WILL overtake North America + Europa as the economical center of the world. And we will stay behind in the mud, bickering among ourselves as usual. But that doesn't lure me into learning Chinese right now. Even though the Western world is stagnant it contains a wealth of culture, of science and of language learning opportunities that makes it more than enough to cope with for any human being. And English is the key to international communication within this part of the world. We can't all trade with with the Asian countries, and I'm perfectly confident that enough of you guys will try to learn Chinese to cover our needs. Of course the Chinese government could choose to celebrate its economical victories by demanding that all outsiders trade with China in Mandarin, but there is no reason to believe that they would do that - they are much too pragmatic. Besides the Chinese have 5000 years of isolationistic mentality, and having Mandarin as their private language wouldn't bother them. In practice - and with the advances in technology that can overcome the barrier of the Chinese writing - it is likely that Chinese influence will spread in all over the world. But language learning is a longterm project, and English will continue to be a useful language even in Asia as long as those who learn it today are alive. And that's enough for me. Edited by Iversen on 16 July 2011 at 3:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 28 of 121 16 July 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Do you have a background in economics? I'm just curious. Some parts of the West took longer to "industrialize" because they were at the forefront and stayed there. There is a difference between taking established technology and creating it. Almost everything you're saying about Chinese growth could have been said about 19th century Germany. Chinese growth has been strong, roughly 10% annually for a while now. Indian growth hasn't been, although in the last four or five years they have started seeing the kind of growth that a country of its poverty is capable of (+/-9%). People focus on China because of its scale. 1.3 billion people matter. And don't think that 10% annual growth will continue forever.
I was trying to say that poor in America is better than most of China. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/01/americas-poor-indias-ric hest.html
PPP per capita GDP in China is ~$7,500. It's ~$47,200 in the US. These numbers come from the IMF. No one is denying the size of China. I'm just trying to say that you shouldn't jump the gun on their ascendancy.
What economic indicators? The West has a lot going for it. Don't confuse growth with wealth. Don't confuse a bad recession with fundamental problems in the economy. High sovereign debt is actually not that hard of a problem to deal with with the right political will. Look at Canada or New Zealand. The problem in the West right now is one of political will. China has its own demographic problems, and I don't think that their population today will be as amenable to the kind of "family planning" their parents were. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/05/world_popu lation_projections
English is an official language in three G8 countries. That matters.
Most of the Chinese I have met in America are following the same linguistic trends as almost every other group that has come here. I don't know of any statistics for this, so you can value my anecdotal evidence however you like. The 2000 census put Germans has the largest ethnic group in the US, but I don't think Germany is banking on that.
All of this is basically getting us to the same conclusion. Mandarin matters, and it matters in a way that no other Western language except for English does. Whether Mandarin is #1 or English almost doesn't matter because the other one would likely be #2. That being said, I learn languages for fun, not profit. I have at least on one occasion gotten a job because of my Spanish and indirectly a small scholarship because of my French, but I see that more as a residual gain. I think Mandarin would be very fun to learn, and I actually got to intermediate fluency in high school before I took a break from learning languages. Mandarin (as I'm sure any very "foreign" language would also do) has a way of putting things in perspective. As a native English speaker, I think German can at times be very ... interesting. Next to Mandarin, the differences shrink. That by itself is a good reason for me to learn. Having a country like China behind it only sweetens the pot. 3 persons have 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 29 of 121 16 July 2011 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I do have a B.A. in Economics, though I'm not really using any specialized knowledge here.
Exactly — and Germany has remained one of the world's foremost countries ever since (remember WWII, where Germany successfully fought an entire continent on two fronts?). Now imagine if Germany was 27 times larger with 16 times the population — this is what I'm talking about.
Exactly. That's my whole point. -.-"
I'm sure you're aware that no one is expecting such a thing. What *is* being expected is for China to reach a per capita wealth parity with the rest of the developed world. The discussion here is not Chinese people individually becoming super-rich, but China as a state accumulating enough domestic wealth to become supremely influential. There's a reason we're not talking about the UAE or Norway, however rich their citizens may individually be.
Again, the issue here is not living standards. Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland all have higher living standards than the US, but that doesn't even remotely diminish the US's influence. I honestly don't understand what's so hard to understand about this concept.
My point was that even if English were only spoken in the US, it'd still be more useful and influential than Arabic — a transnational lingua franca.
Most Chinese in the West — adults and youth alike — speak a Chinese language, and many of the Western-born youth are learning Mandarin (if not their family's heritage language) and written Chinese. Moreover, this trend is increasing, rather than decreasing — contrary to the conventional wisdom that a diaspora would lose its linguistic heritage over time. Perhaps I should repeat myself: I am not suggesting that Chinese will become more influential than English in regions that speak Indo-European languages. I believe, quite reasonably, that the world will continue to linguistically consolidate itself into a half-dozen or so regional lingua francas — English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, and possibly Russian, French, and Portuguese. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fiveonefive Diglot Groupie Japan Joined 5694 days ago 69 posts - 88 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Swedish | Message 30 of 121 17 July 2011 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Very few serious economists think that China will reach per capita wealth parity with the rest of the developed world within our lifetimes.
Size of the economy, yes, within 20 years. But per capita? Not going to happen without huge cultural and societal changes. Starting with the educational system that stresses rote learning above all else. China is producing millions of technicians, not engineers and scientists. The same problem is currently tying South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan down. BTW - The US has higher living standards than Sweden and Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP %29_per_capita Edited by Fiveonefive on 17 July 2011 at 2:21am 2 persons have 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 31 of 121 17 July 2011 at 2:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are arguably the three most successful countries outside of the West. To use them as an example of "failure" is ridiculous and bordering on insanity.
Higher GDP per capita does not mean a country has higher living standards. Sweden and Switzerland are highly equitable countries, where the GDP per capita does indeed reflect the average Swedish or Swiss citizen, but the average income figure of the US is massively pulled upward by the country's ultra-rich, the top 1% of whom own 42% of the country's financial wealth (the bottom 80% own 7%). Alternatively, the top 20% own 93% of the nation's wealth. This is why GDP per capita figures do a poor job of comparing countries with different income distributions, even if adjusted for purchasing power. Edited by nway on 17 July 2011 at 2:39am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fiveonefive Diglot Groupie Japan Joined 5694 days ago 69 posts - 88 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Swedish | Message 32 of 121 17 July 2011 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I didn't say they were failures but they are noticeably lagging behind other countries with a similar level of development which is one of the many reasons why their GDP per capita is not converging with the US.
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