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Foreign languages fade-- except Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6049 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 17 of 30 01 February 2010 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I personally feel this is, if true, is somewhat ridiculous.
Americans needs to be learning Spanish. We live with people who speak Spanish, we will meet people who speak Spanish, may work with people who Speak Spanish, etc. Everyone knows the numbers, what is it 15% or more of the US? More people need to learn this language than ever before. Enthusiasm for Chinese and other Asian or "harder" language is great, but in high school? Honestly how many of these kids are going to get anything out of a 1 year high school class in Chinese? How many will meet a Chinese person? Work with one? The final absurdity is that China has more people learning English than the entire population of the United States. If there is a true economic need, they will be the ones stepping up to the plate and learning English, not the other way around. I closely related fact is that the average Chinese works for a fraction of what Americans earn; if there is a economic reason, then they are the ones that truly have the drive to learn our language, and the ones that deserve any benefits. Just my opinion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 18 of 30 01 February 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
English had momentum long before the Internet gained popularity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 19 of 30 01 February 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese make up 20% of the population in San Francisco. Hispanics and Latinos are 15%. EVERYTHING is trilingual in English, Chinese, and Spanish, because Chinese is actually more important here than Spanish is. Much of California is the same way, and big cities like New York, Chicago, etc. also have large Chinese populations.
Chinese may not be common in your area but it's more than offset by the areas where it's prevalent...it's just centralized and highly concentrated rather than widespread. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| roy2005 Diglot Groupie Hong Kong Joined 6549 days ago 70 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German | Message 20 of 30 01 February 2010 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
But we don't know whether many of them actually speak Mandarin (the Chinese that most people are learning). They may either only speak other dialects, or that their parents might not have even taught them the language if they were born in the U.S., making them monolingual English speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6124 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 21 of 30 01 February 2010 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
There are quite a few Cantonese speakers here (SF Bay area). We had a large influx around the time of the Hong Kong turnover. I have an anecdote about this, a friend of mine is married to a Chinese speaking woman, and his Jr. College Chinese class had a large number of Cantonese speaking students studying Mandarin. So, these classes serve another purpose. With high school language classes, most mono-lingual English speaking students aren't going to end up being that fluent in either Spanish or Mandarin, so I don't see any harm in knowing a bit of Mandarin, rather than knowing a bit of Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JBI Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5690 days ago 46 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, English* Studies: Italian, Mandarin, French | Message 22 of 30 02 February 2010 at 7:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Doesn't even matter - when you study Mandarin you develop, if you study characters, a stronger visual memory - you learn to memorize visually, and to associate shapes with meaning, which is beneficial even if you don't progress. Likewise, when you study Spanish, you learn to associate sounds with meanings, which is also beneficial, even if you don't progress.
The options in the United States are very strong. Everybody should take advantage of what they have; that the state is cutting some languages is sad indeed, but ultimately Spanish, or Chinese, any language learning is useful. I regret not pursuing Latin or French more in high school, but they were offered. Chinese wasn't. Now when I study Chinese, I work hard, because my visual memory is only now developing, as my native language is phonetic (Hebrew) and my English learning was based mostly on phonetic understandings rather than visual ones. That Chinese is on the rise is no surprise. The American government has historically worked to match American interests with education; funding for Japanese in university settings, for instance, was super-boosted after occupation began - the whole notion of East Asian Studies has a government-policy reliance in its beginnings. That being said, will speakers of 2 years or whatever be fluent? The answer is no. The point is though, they will be two years closer to fluency, and if they continue, they will be able to learn characters more easily because they know how to write stroke orders and things already, and they will pick up conversation faster, as they will already be familiar with the sounds. Even if they don't continue there are still advantages. Still, cutting any education is painful - Latin and Ancient Greek may be disappearing, but French and German seem important enough. Still, my Canadian high school only offered French and Latin, and I turned out just fine, so perhaps it doesn't matter much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 23 of 30 02 February 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
There used to be many more Cantonese speakers but it's about 50/50 now. Almost all of them know a little Mandarin too, just like in mainland China. I've got articles if you like: San Francisco Los Angeles The problem with not passing on the language is the same in any immigrant community, and Chinese is still the largest. For what it's worth I also often see schoolgirls on the bus speaking Mandarin to one another. It's just as important, if not more so, than Spanish in many parts of the USA. Edited by Astrophel on 02 February 2010 at 6:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 24 of 30 02 February 2010 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Most of the millions of Chinese who learn English never achieve anywhere near functional fluency so it's irrelevant. Secondly, if you want to be successful in the Chinese market (which thousands of companies want), then Chinese proficiency is essential. The multinational companies of the world need the Chinese market much more than the Chinese market needs them. Hence THEY will learn Chinese. That said, I think it's more reasonable for the average American high school student to go with Spanish. In 30 years I might change my mind. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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