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Is Chinese going to be the lingua franca? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| free4eternity Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5516 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 33 of 249 17 October 2009 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I doubt that Chinese will become the lingua franca. I really doubt that everyone will be able to learn and remember enough characters to communicate in the first place...
I think latin should be the lingua france. It had been the language of the scholars in the past, so why not revive it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 34 of 249 17 October 2009 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the first bit of decoupling that needs to happen in this debate is the decoupling of American power from the ubiquity of English. The second can survive without the first. Consider, for example, that one of the countries at the BRIC summit actually has English as an official language and uses it as the national lingua franca.
I'm not sure what United States Peter Schiff is living in, but it's not the one I'm from. We've certainly felt plenty of pain in the Midwest, and it's equally clear to most people that we're now starting to recover. The idea that the United States isn't the driving force behind the global economy is absurd and silly. China has an incredible rate of growth right now. Assuming they don't completely ruin their environment,* they'll catch the US in terms of GDP sometime in the next two decades. But right now, they still make up a relatively small slice of the pie. By nominal GDP in 2008, the United States was 23% of the global economy with an output about of $14.5 trillion. Second was Japan at 8% with $5 trillion. China only came in third, with $4.5 trillion. That's a pretty big margin. If you really think it's a good idea to decouple from a fourth of global productivity, have at it, but I assure you, you won't like the consequences. *This is no small assumption, and the Chinese government clearly knows it. Edited by Woodpecker on 17 October 2009 at 2:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5764 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 35 of 249 17 October 2009 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think there's much chance of Chinese becoming the lingua franca and overtaking English. Firstly, as Woodpecker has pointed out, figures seem to be stacked up against China in this regard, and, at the rate they are actually growing, again, as Woodpecker mentioned, I think they're likely to utterly destroy their environment before they get anywhere near close. China is a powerful lingua franca in its own part of the world, however the vast majority of its speakers are concentrated in one place - China - and this statement probably holds even more water if we consider that there are, at least to my knowledge, only two very widely spoken Chinese dialects - Mandarin and Cantonese. The rest of the dialects are probably concentrated in the areas of China where they were originally spoken - anyone correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm probably making many assumptions here. I assume also that the Latin alphabet is the most commonly used alphabet - getting so many people to use a different script from the one to which they are accustomed would be inpractical.
Jack 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5526 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 36 of 249 17 October 2009 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Woodpecker, how do you see signs of recovery from your perspective?
What Schiff meant was that the various stimulus packages that have been injected into the economy stopped the system from collapsing but will ultimately make matters worse. He also points out that the American consumer is not consuming - they are, in general, way over their head in debt and need to live within their means, and as it has been the debt-financed consumerism that drove the growth in the economy this means that recovery won't come from the allready way over their head in debt-place consumer. As long as there is too much debt in the system, the American consumer won't consume, and growth won't resume, it might get even worse. And with the U6 number close to 19 %, things all ready look pretty bad. But I agree that English can survive as the lingua franca in certain parts of the world regardless of what happens with the US economy. However, if Steve Kaufman is right about that things can change rapidly and that the past is not a good source to predict the future, and if the Western economic model collapses, English may go down with it - or stagnate as other languages and cultures enter the world's stage. Polution is a huge problem in China and it is important that they do something about it - just as we have to in our part of the world. Copenhagen, where I live, is actually one of the filthiest cities in the world. So the more green of us want more green energy, and lo and behold, we have Vestas, a windmill company exporting windmills all over the world. And therefore news about the windmill business sometimes make headlines in Denmark. Like a couple of months ago when it was known that China wanted to invest billions in a mega-giga Watt windmill complex in some extremely windy and remote part of the country - and Vestas was not invited. Why? Because their own Chinese company had all the knowhow they needed... to do it themselves. This might seem trivial to you but it is actually one of those small signs of the times that they are changing, and changing fast. So the Chinese don't need Danish windmill knowhow but it might still be possible to do business with them. In Danish? No. In English? Perhaps. How about Mandarin? Certainly. If Danish companies could speak Mandarin, and tried to understand where the Chinese were coming from (which I am told is different from what we might think), would that make a difference? I think so. Especially if one had something of value to offer. Last time I looked, the yoy growth rate in China was close to 9 percent, in turbulent times where the Danish BNP fell by nearly 7 percent from June last year to June this year, and similar contractions, even in some cases much larger ones (like Lattvia or Iceland). I agree that the American economy is huge and it is important - but it is created with fiscal deficits now at 1,4 trillion dollars. How long time will it take to pay off this debt? One generation? Two? Three? Just to put it into perspective: The saver's and loan scandal of the late 1980's were about fraud but numbering at only 140 billion dollars. The losses were handed over to the taxpayer, and few people seem to know it, but the American tax payer is still paying off the resulting debt, more than twenty years on, and will still do for some years to come. Imagine then how long time it will take to pay off the trillons of dollars that has been loaded onto the American taxpayer and how this will affect the economy. With interest and compound interest to beat. Sky rocketing debt, trade deficits growing every day, consumers maxed out, falling house prices, U6 at 19 %, the Federal Reserve printing money at a frantic pace... are not signs of strength. So the huge size of the American economy is real enough - but the fundamentals are bad. So as one person wrote somewhere in an article about the economic mess and asked, is there nothing we can do about it? No, not really, he wrote, because the system is too sick, beyond repair. No, wait, he added, there is one thing you can do: Learn mandarin. Edited by Rikyu-san on 17 October 2009 at 6:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5675 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 37 of 249 17 October 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Suppose I own a business in China and need an international partner. If I were to seek a partner capable of working in Mandarin, I would immediately find myself with a very small pool of candidates. However, if I search for an English speaking partner, my pool of candidates would be much larger and almost certainly contain more high caliber individuals. At the end of the day, any business that wants to engage the world has to do it in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 38 of 249 17 October 2009 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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1. There is actually very little money in circulation compared with obligations--this is a credit and liquidity crunch. Wages (for the few who are still employed) and prices in the US are flat and starting to fall which is not a good thing--it means that products will become unavailable because inventories will not be replenished. So, the US is facing a situation much like the one Japan has been in since the Bubble Economy (バブル景気) failed only much larger. I would not bet against the dollar long-term for that reason--the Yen gets stronger even as Japan's situation gets worse.
Notice that the debt situation built up over thirty years but it was just a few months of spiking energy and food prices that set off the catastrophe. 2. China must have 10% growth every year to create enough jobs for their young people who come of job age every year. Even 8% or 9%, which would be a roaring boom anywhere else, is inadequate, so China's situation is very precarious. As was the case with Japan in the 1980s, China is seen as an invincible economic engine, but they are wasting their resources creating excess capacity and inventories--buying enormous supplies of metals for example. They need to get a little more socialistic and agrarian to keep people fed and employed or China's future might look more like the past--internal strife and foreign meddling. 3. Per Woodpecker's remarks--which I fundamentally agree with--the coastal states however are a different story from the Midwest and since I am on the West Coast I see Schiff's America: >10% unemployment; houses that have been for sale over three years with no offers (and no renters either); massive cuts in state and local budgets (schools especially) because tax revenues have fallen; weeds along the side of the road are growing to full maturity where they used to be hosed down with poison before they could sprout; young people are moping around in public instead of school, work and Nintendo; many homeless people sojourning through--something I had never seen before; and lately, vehicles that look like something from The Grapes of Wrath are almost always broken down by the side of the road when I use the highway. I don't see any reason to call a bottom right now, it has to get worse first. The tricky part is deciding what kind of "worse" it's going to be. 5. I ask forum members to consider Sumerian--let the first written language unite all humanity! Think about it, with the massive deforestation going on it only makes sense to use clay tablets for our granary records. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5526 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 39 of 249 17 October 2009 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think many valid points about China and US have been given above and I think they add to a more substantial and comprehensive perspective of what is going on.
I would like to pick up a theme that was mentioned above and let the geo-political/economical perspective rest for a moment. If Mandarin, Sanskrit, or Sumerian or any other of the candidates are to replace English I guess the following has to be true: * There should be compelling needs to learn it, in order to communicate and share ideas across an otherwise insurmountable language barriers and share perspectives that is either difficult or impossible to convey otherwise. * The effort put into learning the language has to be easy rather than difficult, unless we talk about a language for an elite class of people * Language is power. In the Middle Ages, Latin was a source of the power of the Church as only the clergy could decipher the (translated into Latin) Bible. So the Lingua Franca we will speak in the future will also reflect relations of power - and either we learn the language that allow us to cross the language barrier, or we don't. English fulfills a practical need in relation to all three criteria, and whether or not it is the best language for us to speak and think in, at least it is immensely practical. I don't think it is the best language, however, and part of my reasons for taking up language studies in German, French, Mandarin, and Japanese is to open the door to different worlds that are inaccessible. If I took up Sanskrit that would open up doors to yet other worlds. And I think that this aspect of learning languages cannot be overestimated. So the lingua franca of the world - say, English - will also determine what kind of world we live in. And I am not sure it is the best of all worlds. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 40 of 249 18 October 2009 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't really want to get into a huge debate on American hegemony on here. I try to avoid doing that sort of thing on the internet. You make some good points, and some that I don't disagree with, but to spare us pages of indicators and wonky econometric graphs (inevitable once somebody brings up Japan), I'll gloss. Certainly, Mandarin is a good language to learn from an investment perspective. I don't think that's enough to overcome all the barriers discussed previously, however. Pfwillard made an important point, too. China has more than just environmental problems, the demographic situation is very serious. I don't believe personally that political stability can be maintained at the current population growth rate. Either the Chinese ruin their environment completely, or they leave a good portion of an entire generation unemployed, and there's a very really chance that they will do both. Is Sinoskepticism a thing yet?
W/R/T the Midwest, well, I shouldn't say "here" anymore, because I've been in Egypt for six weeks now. But I definitely noticed things starting to turn around the few months before I left. I admit, most of my evidence is anecdotal, but hopefully I'm reading it correctly. Personally, my family's small business had a fairly serious and unusual spike in interest in the middle of the summer. In our area out in the country, and in the main residential part of our small town, more houses were starting to sell, and a few were even built. Our area has been developing very fast of late, and it's reassuring that the trend seems to be continuing. In the summers, the town economy is largely based around tourism, and though it wasn't the best year, none of my friends had a lot of trouble finding summer jobs. And in general, people were just more cheerful at the end of the summer. For a very conservative county, Barack Obama seemed to be turning some heads. I admit, other than the bleak and occasionally not-so-bleak statistics I hear on NPR, I don't know much about the state of much of the rest of the country. In defense of the mother tongue, English is a mongrel dog, but it's also very democratic, open, egalitarian kind of language. I think an English-speaking world wouldn't be sooo bad. Final note: I fundamentally disagree with Schiff about how the world works, which is why I'm hesitant to take this debate much further. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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