will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

latenlazy · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
I think you are confusing some factors, when i learn the word Archeology, in Spanish Arquelogia, as a child i never needed to know its greek roots and etymology, if i am learning english i can right away know archeaology means arquelogia, know with Kanjies you are writing ideas not sounds, why? an average child of 7 in any spanish speaking country is able to read and write, you can learn to read and write spanish in few hours, but i can not learn to read and write Japanese or Chinese in few hours, there is no way i can do it, as an alphabetic system, the Chinese and Japanese use of chinese characters change due to the phonetic use of each language, so even for a Japanese Learning chinese is not as straight forward.

One of the reasons Japanese use Hiragana is to accomodate for japanese phonetics into Chinese characters.

And that's exactly my point. It comes naturally to you because you were raised in an environment that gave context to those roots. However, if you were not raised in that environment and you looked up the definition of the roots to try to make sense of a word you would be completely lost. Figuring out the meaning of character combinations is as unnatural to you as figuring out words through latin and greek roots is for a person who grew up learning a different language family. You may not be able to learn to read and write in Chinese or Japanese in a few hours, but I can, because I was raised in that environment. You're confusing difficulty with native and foreign language learning. In any case, the bigger point is that there is nothing implicit within Chinese as a language that prevents it from being adopted universally.

Learning French from English is also not as straightforward. I speak from personal experience here.

Spartan95 · Jun 9, 2011

solarz said:
1- Legalese is difficult for a lay-person to understand in *any* language.

I wasn't referring to lay person understanding it. I was referring to the established institutions currently in existence.

solarz said:
2- The international scientific community used to use Latin, but that changed. The transition doesn't need to be monumental if most of the people involved in the transition phase understand both languages. It's perfectly possible for English to be "phased out", so to speak.

Actually, latin is still used to some extent. For example, the scientific names of species are still in latin (including species which are being discovered up to this day). Mathematic/scientific equations also use latin characters (the latin delta being the universal mathematical symbol for difference/differentiation).

In that sense, you can say that latin hasn't been completely phased out.

solarz said:
Chinese isn't going to be an international language any time soon mainly because Chinese culture isn't as ubiquitous as American culture.

Very true.

MiG-29 · Jun 9, 2011

latenlazy said:
Is that for people who are ethnic Chinese in Singapore or people who speak a different language? (All the Singaporeans I know are ethnic Chinese, so my examples will be a little skewed, though I do not think it damages the external validity of my arguments, as I'm trying to indicate that "difficulty" is not the reason China cannot become a lingua fraca). Either way, the fact that all the formal institutions in Singapore use English supports my point of view that it is not inherent properties within a language that prevent it from being internationally adopted, but in fact the orientation of the dominant institutions.

Trying to scrutinize business and legal language in English is just as hard. Ask any common by stander in the US to read a legal document and tell you what it's saying, and they would be just as confused. Similarly, a native speaker of Chinese will have equal difficulty deciphering legal and business language in Chinese without education and proper exposure and experience. For a person who has acquired conversational English from a different language family the exact points are true in reverse. There is symmetry here.

I agree completely with the rest of your points. I'm not saying that Chinese will become a lingua fraca. I'm merely saying that "difficulty" will not be one of the reasons it doesn't.

I myself doubt that Chinese will acquire the same kind of universal adoption that English and other European languages have, but whether it does or not is a matter of how much influence and power China has in the international environment. With a sufficient power draw and influence to shape international institutions, it's a possibility.

that is not exactly like that, and i will put you a simple example. japanese use kanjies to write their names, however because many names can use different kanjies, they need to re-write their names in hiragana so any one knows how it sounds, same is with technical words, by using an alphabet i can write a word just by the sound, however using characters i can not, i need to know what kanjies have to be used, however most japanese and chinese will use around 3000 kanjies for their daily life, but once they need more than the ones the memorized, they become illiterate, they can not write or read, that is the reason they use kanjies with some phonetic use, nevertheless it will require more knowledge and even a 17 year old japanese will need to have a test to see if he or she can read and write, when a child of 17 in a nation where english is spoken is a given he can write and read a word regardless if he understands the meaning

latenlazy · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
that is not exactly like that, and i will put you a simple example. japanese use kanjies to write their names, however because many names can use different kanjies, they need to re-write they names in hiragana so any one knows, same is with technical words, by using an alphabet i can write a word just by the sound, however using characters i can not, i need to know what kanjies have to be used, however most japanese and chinese will use around 3000 kanjies for their daily life, but once they need more to the ones the memorize, they become illiterate, they can not write or read, that is the reason they use kanjies with some phonetic use, nevertheless it will require more knowledge and even a 17 year old japanese will need to have a test to see if he or she can read and write, when i child of 17 in a nation where english is spoken is a given he can write and read a word regardless if he understand the meaning

And if I don't remember the characters for a word, I can use zhuyin (a system similar to katakana) or pinyin (a romanized system). If I see a character that I don't know, I can figure out the meaning of the word through its context and the radicals being used.

You're overestimating the effectiveness of the English written system and forgetting that spelling has inconsistent rules which must be remembered to know how to write a word. Even educated people have trouble spelling words they've never heard of. Nothing is better evidence of the lack of proper spelling than the internet. Furthermore, knowing how to write a word does not mean that you know what that word means. Here's a simple example. Despite having a phonetic system, I still had to memorize 3000 English words for the SATs. Knowing how to spell and read the word did not mean I knew what that word means.

Again, learning English from Chinese is no easier than learning Chinese from English.

MiG-29 · Jun 9, 2011

latenlazy said:
And if I don't remember the characters for a word, I can use zhuyin (a system similar to katakana) or pinyin (a romanized system). If I see a character that I don't know, I can figure out the meaning of the word through its context and the radicals being used.

You're overestimating the effectiveness of the English written system and forgetting that spelling has inconsistent rules which must be remembered to know how to write a word. Even educated people have trouble spelling words they've never heard of. Nothing is better evidence of the lack of proper spelling than the internet. Furthermore, knowing how to write a word does not mean that you know what that word means. Again, learning English from Chinese is no easier than learning Chinese from English.

The problem is in English, Portuguese or Spanish or any European language there is only one way to write a word, if a say house in Spanish is only casa i do not need to write it in another way, therefore for you will be easier to learn to write and read spanish than to me Chinese where i have to learn several writing system, so for a non native chinese speaker learning Chinese is harder tha learning English so many won`t change english to switch for Chinese as an international language

In Japan Hiragan is only for Children and toddlers younger than 6 years old, adults do not use hiragana only they have to use kanjies

Quickie · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
i think in east asia Chinese might become dominant, i even see chinese replacing Japanese as the most wanted language in Asia, there is a chance chinese culture might become dominant again in Korea or Japan and even malasya, but beyond that i see no future for Chinese unless they develop an alphabet like Latin

There is already a developed Chinese alphabet-based writing in the form of romantized pinyin. They are usefull for typing Chinese characters on computer but are not used at all in Chinese reading media because it's difficult to associate the different intonation of a Chinese word by just the use of a simple stroke.

latenlazy · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
The problem is in English, Portuguese or Spanish or any European language there is only one way to write a word, if a say house in Spanish is only casa i do not need to write it in another way, therefore for you will be easier to learn to write and read spanish than to me Chinese where i have to learn several writing system, so for a non native chinese speaker learning Chinese is harder tha learning English so many won`t change english to switch for Chinese as an international language

In Japan Hiragan is only for Children and toddlers younger than 6 years old, adults do not use hiragana only they have to use kanjies

We could continue this discussion about "which language is more difficult" to infinite regress, but the main point is that difficulty is not a factor in international adoption.

In4ser · Jun 9, 2011

It will definitely be Asia's dominant language for sure as Korean and Japanese share lots of similarities and will increasingly be reliant on China for trade and commerce, India mostly speaks English already. If it is truly the Asian Century then no doubt Chinese will be a dominant language, replacing English as #1 will I don't think it will at least for several generations. Personally I think it will be down to Spanish/Chinese/Arabic and English as the Main languages in particular on regional basis.

solarz · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
The problem is in English, Portuguese or Spanish or any European language there is only one way to write a word, if a say house in Spanish is only casa i do not need to write it in another way, therefore for you will be easier to learn to write and read spanish than to me Chinese where i have to learn several writing system, so for a non native chinese speaker learning Chinese is harder tha learning English so many won`t change english to switch for Chinese as an international language

In Japan Hiragan is only for Children and toddlers younger than 6 years old, adults do not use hiragana only they have to use kanjies

Okay stop right there. Don't try to extend what you know of Japanese onto Chinese. There is only one writing system in Chinese (well, 2 if you count traditional characters), and writing pinyin in any document will just make you look like a kindergarten kid.

And just because you can spell a word phonetically in English, doesn't mean you understand what it means. Which, in the end, amounts to the same thing: you still don't know what that word means.

Yes, writing in Chinese is difficult if you don't do it on a regular basis. I myself have a lot of difficulty writing in Chinese, even though I speak it fluently. However, that's really not an issue when it comes to day-to-day communication. Chinese is easy to type, you don't need to remember how to write the characters, just how to read them. I can't think of any day-to-day communication that requires handwriting these days.

bluewater2012 · Jun 9, 2011

MiG-29 said:
The problem is in English, Portuguese or Spanish or any European language there is only one way to write a word, if a say house in Spanish is only casa i do not need to write it in another way, therefore for you will be easier to learn to write and read spanish than to me Chinese where i have to learn several writing system, so for a non native chinese speaker learning Chinese is harder tha learning English so many won`t change english to switch for Chinese as an international language

Whether one language will replace another as the international language, depends on how many countries actually use it and how that particular language country affect your own. For example, if Asia began switching to Chinese as international and Africa slowing picking up where most of the world began to use it, I don't see why it can't as long as that language benefit you, you follow, that's the trend in todays world.

I also disagree that Chinese are hard to write than say any other language, (okay maybe a bit hard but doable). Look at it this way, imagine the English alphabets are all strokes and slashes as in Chinese characters -there's little differences between the two writing system if you put it in that form. For example, the word "big in Chinese, you only need 3 slashes. If you wrote it in English as big, that's three alphabets, but if you put it in strokes/slashes form, it will be 6 strokes/or slashes using my own way (Each letter will contain two slashes or strokes).

So in the end not much difference unless countries don't want to switch cause they're too used to alphabets system, but the ultimate deciding factor is how many countries use it and the benefits it brings long. For now, I don't think Chinese will replace English, as least not now, but in the far future, I think there a big possibility if things goes along as the way they are today.

will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

latenlazy

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Spartan95

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MiG-29

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latenlazy

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MiG-29

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Quickie

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latenlazy

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In4ser

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solarz

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bluewater2012

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