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English Here to Stay? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 5136 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 17 of 23 18 January 2011 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Remember all the francophone countries. As soon as France lost its importance, French language also lost its role. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium etc couln't change anything on this issue.
How good are educated the rest 47%, who can't? Do they have a big weight in economic terms? How many will it be in 10-15 years?
How many of them are/will be able to speak it? Remember the hundreds of millions who learnt Russian when Soviet Union was alive, 5-10 years after it broke down the number of learners dropped x times.
Well, you could apply "for now, at least" also to your next pro points. I didn't invest a minute in Chinese, so I have no hidden agenda to promote it, but I must admit that Chinese has big chances to become a global language in the next 15 years. However, I still think that English has a higher potential since it is easier to hold the position than to break into it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| litovec Tetraglot Groupie Switzerland lingvometer.com Joined 5136 days ago 42 posts - 60 votes Speaks: German, Russian, French, English | Message 19 of 23 19 January 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
I'll be the last one who would tell this :), I wrote "lost its importance", i.e. importance it once had
Ok, I'll answer them. 53% who can communicate are likely to be better educated and earn significant more (for instance, they might make up 90% of China's GDP), who can't. 700+ millions can effectively communicate in High Chinese today. Even though the China's peasents can't, their children will master it.
Here our opinions may differ, but I think "one in three" who are/will be able to speak it at an acceptable level is a very strong assumption.
Let me disagree. USSR was a very big exporter of ideas. First, idea of social justice. Especially in 30s, when USA faced Great Depression, it was very popular. Soviets made a great advencement in math and physics. They supplied with technology and stuff the Third World. Influence wasn't only a militaristic one although playing a big role.
It wasn't complete charity. Soviets were likely to have lost the war without American help, it wasn't in America's interest.
Even though we have different argumentation, we came to the same conclusion :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5099 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 20 of 23 19 January 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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The author's premise that English came to dominance in the age of print, high literacy and widespread media is interesting... but I'm not convinced this couldn't change over time.
China's rise to economic dominance could, theoretically, bring with it massive amounts of pop culture. If that pop culture starts to catch on in the west, then people may start wanting to learn it. Just as Hollywood and American pop have contributed to spreading English, if it's popular enough people will want access to Chinese language media too. The fact that we are now in the digital age makes this more likely (not less), as the internet allows for even obscure media to find an audience anywhere in the world. For example, I look at how Japanese and Korean media have spread on the internet, to people who would otherwise never have access to it, and I don't see why the same couldn't happen for Chinese on a larger scale. If there is demand for it, it will happen. Maybe not overnight, but there is no reason it couldn't happen, in my opinion. True, westerners do view characters are being unnecessarily difficult, but technology is also changing the way we read and write over time. People are increasingly spending more time on mobile and electronic devices. In other words, we are spending more time *typing* than we are hand writing. Now, I don't know what's involved with typing Mandarin or how difficult it is. But typing and reading Japanese kanji online has become a lot easier in recent years. Pop-up browser dictionaries make it possible to simply hover over an unknown character and get an instantaneous definition. IME systems automatically pop up with suggestions for you as you type, etc. Of course, this is not to say that any Chinese language will replace English. I'm not saying that it necessarily will. But I do think it could, in theory, given the right set of circumstances. Edited by starrye on 19 January 2011 at 8:33pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5099 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 21 of 23 19 January 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Deleted. Sorry, I posted twice by mistake. Edited by starrye on 19 January 2011 at 8:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5677 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 22 of 23 20 January 2011 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
America winning the Cold War would not have been in America's interests? :-) I suspect there's a mix-up between World War II and the Cold War here, but I had to check anyway... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6074 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 23 of 23 20 January 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
we don't own ideas, we can't steal them; ideas own us. besides, combining ideas is one of the fundamental exercises in creative thinking. so, I don't think that's per se a "disincentive" (it's double-sided) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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