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2006-04-22 China-Japan-Koreas

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Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-04-22 16:11|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 This is real cart before the horse stuff. If China becomes a significant economic power, as opposed to living off table scraps, the way it is today, the use of Mandarin will spike. Until that happens, all the promotion in the world will be for naught. Japanese caught on big-time when it seemed as if Japan would overtake the US in GDP per capita. Now that this is no longer conceivable, Japanese language studies have fallen through the cracks. Even so, there are probably more non-overseas Japanese learning Japanese than there are non-ethnic Chinese learning Chinese - again, Japanese is simply far more useful than Chinese, because Japan is far richer than China will be for at least the next 50 years.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-04-22 18:47|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-04-22 18:47|| Front Page Top

#2 The other point not noted here is that it is not the number of native speakers of a language that is an indicator of relative influence - it is the number of non-native speakers. The total number of native speakers of English is more or less the same as the number of native speakers of Arabic and Spanish. But the number of non-native speakers of English numbers in the high hundreds of millions - and many of them speak it well enough to read English newspapers, which is a relatively high level of literacy.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-04-22 18:52|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-04-22 18:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Most of what needs to be read by others (I'm thinking business and technical, not literature) was originally written in English, even, or especially, if only yesterday. I'm not so sure this will be true in 50 years unless we start producing more engineers.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-04-22 19:01|| 2006-04-22 19:01|| Front Page Top

#4 Chinese Madrassahs

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-04-22 19:26|| 2006-04-22 19:26|| Front Page Top

#5 #2, "..and many of them speak it well enough to read English newspapers."

Right. And I even think in it...which is something not many readily or consciously admits.

Posted by Duh! 2006-04-22 19:37|| 2006-04-22 19:37|| Front Page Top

#6 |/ >)< ^/.. +&/ ~!!/

How am I doing so far?

Posted by Besoeker 2006-04-22 19:55|| 2006-04-22 19:55|| Front Page Top

#7 How do you say,
"Bite my wang!"
in chinese?

Posted by DarthVader 2006-04-22 19:56|| 2006-04-22 19:56|| Front Page Top

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