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The future of Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 41 of 46 17 October 2010 at 11:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
O.K. then... Lets try the Philippines. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5341 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 42 of 46 17 October 2010 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The Phillippinos certainly have one of the highest level of English proficiency in Southeast Asia, if not the entire East Asia. However, the Phillippines do not really have the political clout of China, nor does it possess the economic might of Japan, nor does it enjoy the strong soft power (in terms of pop culture) that South Korea has. In Southeast Asia itself (if not in the whole of East Asia), the Phillippines also unfortunately has a negative image on security, eg the recent kidnapping of a busload of tourists by an ex police officer that resulted in the death of all the tourists on the bus. I doubt that East Asians will adopt English as its Lingua Franca forever due to the Phillippines.
However, it is indeed a fact that more and more Japanese and Koreans are learning Chinese (and vice versa where many Chinese are learning Japanese and Korean), not to mention that there's also a growing number of Southeast Asians learning the CJK languages. However, as someone has pointed out earlier, English is still going to stay put in the region for awhile due to the economic/military power of the US. Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 17 October 2010 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 43 of 46 17 October 2010 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I just don't see how Chinese can displace English.
As a result of the one child policy China's population is aging and will start shrinking during this century. You are correct when you say that the Philippines are not as influential as China. However, you can't look at the Philippines in isolation. The Philippines alone? Not enough. Singapore alone? Not enough. Neighbouring India alone? Not enough. Australia? Not enough. What happens when you start adding them up??? The English language is like a snowball rolling down a snow covered mountain. It keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger and faster and faster... Edited by John Smith on 17 October 2010 at 1:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 44 of 46 17 October 2010 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Quickly, here are some of the main reasons why Mandarin is set to replace English in East Asia: China is already today the largest trading partner for most (all?) East Asian nations. But this is not a static state. Each year, more and more of the trade in East Asia involves China. To take Japan as an example, more and more Japanese companies are looking for employees who can speak Mandarin, because it helps with doing business in China. Now some people say "oh, they will all just use English because it is already established". At first, yes. But in 20 years? 30 years? No. Companies and organizations will seek that extra advantage that comes from knowing Mandarin. They will want their workers to be able to follow the Chinese media, to do market research in China, to talk to people lower in the supply chain. All other things equal, companies with Mandarin- speaking workers will be more successful and profitable. Next, China is in the process of building up academic and research institutions that will rival those of advanced nations like Japan and the U.S.* In this and other areas, China is following the tried and true formulas that have propelled Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore to success. There is much reason to believe they will succeed as least as well as the other Asian tigers. These academic and research institutions will attract many of the best and brightest of East Asia, who will learn Mandarin in order to study and do research in China. In all of these discussions, the main thing to keep in mind is scale. You hear China (10x the population of Japan) being compared to Japan a lot in arguments such as "ah, we've seen this before with Japan and it turned out to be all hype. Their bubble burst and that was the end of it." Well, Japan's bubble did burst, but not before they achieved one of the highest standards of living on the planet and built up a plethora of world-class companies that compete globally with great success. Japan didn't lose these great things when the bubble burst. They just weren't able to grow much more after that. Now imagine that China's growth follows a similar path as Japan's. Let's suppose China's bubble bursts when they reach a similar GDP per person as Japan. China's economy will have become four times larger than America's. In East Asia, America's economic power would be hardly noticeable in the wake of China's. East Asia would be transformed. Optimistic estimates put China's GDP passing America's around 2020. Conservative estimates put the date around 2030. The conservative estimates assume growth is going to slow considerably over the next couple decades, and that there will be some political turmoil. Could China implode and fall into utter chaos because of an environmental or political catastrophe? It's possible. Is it likely? If you take a sober look at the whole picture, it doesn't look likely at all within the next few decades. All of the original Asian Tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore) were not democracies during their main stage of development, and yet they all managed both to maintain growing and to politically liberalize. Lastly, remember that because of China's scale, they can royally f**k up a lot of things, but still come out enormously influential and powerful as a nation, with Mandarin riding on that wave. *http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/707569 8/China-to-lead-world- scientific-research-by-2020.html http://sciencewatch.com/ana/fea/08julaugFea/ Edited by lichtrausch on 17 October 2010 at 7:32pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 45 of 46 18 October 2010 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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O.k. even if the above happens English will probably still linger on like Latin did in Europe for centuries. You can't get rid of a lingua franca that easily.
What I see happening is most people becoming trilingual in the area. A thai person would speak Thai, English and Chinese. A Vietnamese person would speak Viet, English and Chinese. On the other side of the world the same thing will probably happen in Europe. A Polish person might speak Polish, English and Russian. An Italian might speak Italian, English and German. When trilingualism is the norm around the world bilingualism will finally come to the USA. Spanish and English. Always one behind the rest of the world. I think that speaking one language only worked when different nations were isolated. We now live in a global village. Most villagers in countries like Papua New Guinea speak three language with ease. Everyday we are more like those villigers. In contact with lots of languages whether we like it or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5524 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 46 of 46 18 October 2010 at 6:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Nah, it'll still be English, with lots of communities all over the country that speak their own language, as usual. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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