Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Second most important language

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
Poll Question: What is the second most important language in the world after English?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
5 [4.13%]
35 [28.93%]
25 [20.66%]
9 [7.44%]
47 [38.84%]
You can not vote in this poll

68 messages over 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 57 ... 6 ... 8 9 Next >>
MarcusOdim
Groupie
Brazil
Joined 4597 days ago

91 posts - 142 votes 

 
 Message 41 of 68
14 October 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged 
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



2 persons have voted this message useful



Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5
Joined 5516 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 
montmorency wrote:
Always read the question, and I admit that I didn't read it properly before answering:
"Poll Question: What is the second most important language in the world after
English?"
Present tense, indicative mood. Not future, no what ifs, maybes, or might-have-beens.

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 6442 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 
MarcusOdim wrote:
Mandarin is overrated and "overugly", FACT

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 5516 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 
Psh, trolls like being fed.
6 persons have voted this message useful



nway
Senior Member
United States
youtube.com/user/Vic
Joined 5165 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 
MarcusOdim wrote:
Your polls have no use for me

Uh...what "polls"?

MarcusOdim wrote:
Mandarin sucks an will always suck and never be as
important as English and Spanish

Sounds like you have a rather obsessive personal vendetta against this language...

MarcusOdim wrote:
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

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:

MarcusOdim wrote:

...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.

Bao wrote:
Psh, trolls like being fed.

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 4608 days ago

17 posts - 26 votes
Speaks: Mandarin*

 
 Message 46 of 68
15 October 2011 at 8:01am | IP Logged 
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 5084 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 
nway wrote:
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
However when I see that the life expectancy among speakers of Arabic and Indonesian is set way above speakers of Norwegian, I am reminded of the three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. Don't get me wrong, I am sure nway has done a great job with it, but there simply must be an error somewhere. Either that or I have completey misunderstood what is being measured.

It was life expectancy per GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), which measures the resilience of the population's ability to thrive despite
not necessarily being wealthy. In other words, the Vietnamese and Japanese, though of extremely varying levels of wealth, both live much longer than
the rest of the world relative to their wealth. By contrast, Russian life expectancy is much shorter than the relative wealth of Russia, per capita, would
suggest. There are various ways to manipulate the two variables to produce the final score, but the way I did so equalizes the culturally identical regions
of Hong Kong and mainland China, which is a good indicator that there is some intrinsic logic to this methodology. The reason Norway is so low is likely
due to the fact that Norwegian GDP per capita is so high. :)


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 5516 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 
Sennin wrote:
The fact is that Confucius institutes are popping up everywhere, and I'm seriously tempted.

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



This discussion contains 68 messages over 9 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 57 8 9  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.9375 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.