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And if English weren’t so global? | ||
Tags: Language Importance | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5799 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: English | Message 25 of 39 16 June 2009 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Exactly my point. Well put, Tombstone.
jbbar 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5860 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 26 of 39 16 June 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
According to who? Please provide a link. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 27 of 39 16 June 2009 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not outside the realms of possibility that Chinese could become as strong as English within the time-span of 100 years. Hypothetically, if they start dominating East Asia others in Asia would start learning the language. Once most people in Asia could speak it, it would spread out.
How common is Chinese as second language in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia? I've surely heard it spoken a lot in the cities of the latter two. The need to learn German and French for business reasons is not that great anymore -- people above a certain level in these countries can always speak English. The language skills are more useful for junior roles, customer facing and ability to network in that language for serious careerists. Obviously nice for tourist purposes but not strictly needed. A cousin of mine went on an exchange year to US (Alaska) recently and found to her surprise that Japanese and Chinese were the ONLY foreign languages offered in her year, although she and a few others insisted on Spanish and eventually got it. There was some kind of Pacific-rim focus at this school. Currently Chinese it is nowhere near as popular as it ought to be as a foreign language! Obviously it's darn hard and that's a good reason not to jump into it unless you are serious. But you'd think there'd be a greater interest in the language of the worlds most populous country and second largest economy. Just think how fast English became the most popular language in Europe! Before the 1940s French and German were just as common as first foreign languages, if not more. For example, none of my grandparents studied English in school (in Sweden), they studied German and French. Another example of a language moving into regional "lingua franca" status very fast is Russian. It seems to be the preferred language for business etc in all of the ex-USSR states apart from the Baltics. This happend in less than a century as I understand it and is helpful in areas with lots of small and very different languages, like Caucasus. Chinese could bite us all in the back 20 years from now when the China owns half the world (I understand they are progressing towards that rather fast right now..) and we cannot speak with them... Edited by cordelia0507 on 16 June 2009 at 7:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| WANNABEAFREAK Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong cantonese.hk Joined 6826 days ago 144 posts - 185 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Cantonese Studies: French | Message 28 of 39 16 June 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Only HALF of China can speak Mandarin. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2007/03/only-half-chinese-speak -mandarin-bbc/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6426005.stm http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2007/03/07/only_half_of_ chinese_can_speak_mandarin http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKPEK33410320070307 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5799 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English | Message 29 of 39 16 June 2009 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I disagree. China is just one country that is growing economically. There is still India, many South East Asian countries (e.g. Vietnam), several Latin American nations, and Russia. China deserves no more privilege than any of these countries, and neither does the Mandarin language. As for your claim that French and German are not that important anymore, that is incorrect. One word: location. Alaska is not representative of the world, not even of the United States. Of course it may make more sense for an Aussie or a Kiwi to learn Japanese or Chinese than Spanish, but to an European or North American, languages such as English, French, German and Spanish are still the most important and useful. Btw, how did Russian get to be the lingua franca in Kazakhstan, the Baltic nations or the Caucasus again? Be careful not to neglect the history involved there. jbbar Edited by jbbar on 16 June 2009 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5982 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 30 of 39 16 June 2009 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Could any language that uses a writing system as difficult as Chinese ever become a
worldwide language? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 31 of 39 16 June 2009 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ JS-1
From the little I know of it there is certain logic to it, and sometimes a story behind the signs. For somebody who is dyslexic I suppose it might even be easier. That said, in Singapore kids that are considered below average tend to focus on English instead of Chinese, since the opinion even among the Chinese there is that Chinese is more difficult than English. Everyone is bilingual there, in their own peculiar way and the spoken English has a lot of Chinese influences (aka Singlish) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5799 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English | Message 32 of 39 16 June 2009 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's odd. Is this true of Hong Kong as well? English is an official language there, but it seems most people speak Cantonese. I wonder how they look at the future of Mandarin Chinese and English.
jbbar 1 person has voted this message useful |
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