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Second most important language | ||
Tags: Language Importance | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4857 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 41 of 68 14 October 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Take it easy, nway, hahahahahaha
Your polls have no use for me, Mandarin sucks an will always suck and never be as important as English and Spanish, if you wanna learn it, ok, go on, you just seem to be unable to answer my reasons (like those about why Mandarin isn't important for business) so I simply play around and that's what you quote. All you do is quote comments like my last one (just unimportant), you flee as much as possible. Learn Mandarin if you want, whatever That's what I said, Mandarin is gonna be a second German soon "Why learn language X if the natives speak English so well" Mandarin may be the lingua franca in Asia........in Asia! China ins't the only important country in the world and they still have many issues to fix, several social problems, slavery, underpayment and all those things 
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5776 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 42 of 68 14 October 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
You have a point there. And yet, a statement like "Today the most imporant language in the world is English." only works when today doesn't mean 'the current 24hrs' but 'present time; the current period or era which defines itself in contrast to known past and forseeable future eras. (What was that called again, pars pro toto?) I think it's very clear that the importance of languages doesn't simply change overnight; even when one language suddenly loses it's status the languages that fill the gap are must have co-existed with the other language or they must develop rapidly to fulfil its new role. nway, respect. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ilcommunication Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 115 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 43 of 68 14 October 2011 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Tell me, how many people learn English merely because they think it sounds beautiful? When it comes to the importance of a language, its supposed aesthetic qualities couldn't be less relevant. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5776 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 44 of 68 14 October 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Psh, trolls like being fed.
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| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5425 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 45 of 68 14 October 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Uh...what "polls"?
Sounds like you have a rather obsessive personal vendetta against this language...
Yes, and English and Spanish may be the lingua francas in the West and Latin America, but the West and Latin America aren't the only important regions in the world, and they still have many issues to fix—several social problems, massive debt, higher rates of crime, chronic obesity, and all those things. ;) And as for this:
...I'm not the one hating on a language. This may come as a shock to you, but I actually like my native language (English) and consequently haven't said anything to spite it, which is in rather stark contrast to your bizarre disgust for Mandarin.
Bah, true, but I've always had a compassion for feeding the hungry. I should know better... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| jiajia Newbie China Joined 4868 days ago 17 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 46 of 68 15 October 2011 at 8:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Let's get straight to the point, IMHO it mainly depends how you yourself define the term “important”, and what you think are the decisive factors in your judgement, economic power, total population, social order, moral standard, cultural influence, science and technology, gap between the rich and the poor, whether English is widely, correctly spoken or not, and whatever else. Each individual definition of the word “important” may reach a rather different conclusion, sometimes there's still a lot of prejudice against certain country or certain language during the course of lively debate.
Well, I was going to vote for French and Spanish, a pity this is a single-choice question, so, from a Chinese or a personal perspective, I voted for French at last, actually I don't care how many French ex-colonies there are in Africa or somewhere, nor do I care whether they belong to the poorest part of the world, that's to say what attracts me most to French is France itself, together with Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec etc. Russian had once been highly popular in the 1950s ~1960s in mainland China before English took its place to be compulsory, since then the popularity of Russian has gradually fallen into decline, if I remember rightly, its influence on Eastern Europe has already weakened to some extent and, what's more, it was said Russia's population would keep shrinking based on an authoritative report. As for Arabic, no offence, I personally think it won't qualify as the 2nd or 3rd most important language until the Arab world manages to tackle a series of problems successfully, especially security threat which has always been a burning issue in the Middle East. We wish you (Arabic speakers) a peaceful world without any terrorist attacks and body bombs. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5344 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 47 of 68 15 October 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Thank you nway, then I had completely misunderstood what was being measured. I am afraid I am better with languages than with figures... I must say that I have never met such a combination of passion and knowledge in championing a language. I have never really considered studying Mandarin, because I currently have no use for it, and I figure that if it at some point does become a neccesity to know it, I will be too old for it to be relevant to me. If I however ever do decide to learn Mandarin, you will be 80% responsible :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5776 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 48 of 68 15 October 2011 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I know where the one in my city is. And I'm seriously tempted too. Maybe they do have morning classes? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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