will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

bingo said:

Certainly good for you. Very soon, you could be posting the same message as above, but in chinese language and on a chinese language equivalent of sinodefenceforum.com, rather than here.

Looking forward .... if sinodefenceforum really wants to attract quality people, it should change it's base language from English to Chinese.


Else, it runs a risk of being swallowed by chinese language defence forums


That is just my prediction for the future (.... very near future, actually).

A clear clue is the opinion of all the posters on this thread ... except Mig-29.

Anyone can see where all of them are headed.

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Hey don't get me wrong. I'm actually in agreement with Mig-29 about English staying the main international language. There's a lot of institutional inertia backing it that will be hard to counteract. I was disagreeing with his reasoning, because as a student of the social sciences who's dabbled a bit into language and cognition (my cousin is a linguist professor in Beijing) it seemed very clear to me that language difficulty being the reason why seemed ignorant of how we actually acquire language, how they work, and how they're embedded into our every day social systems.

Also, I don't think the quality of a forum-er has anything to do with their nationality or what language they speak. Chinese hyper-nationalists are equally as problematic as American hyper-nationalists.

AssassinsMace said:

If English were so important in computer programming, why don't Indians beat the Chinese in programming competitions? Their English skills they say are better than the Chinese yet they never place in the top ranks. What does that say? And how come they don't dominate non-English speaking countries computer programming if everything is in English?

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Ummm... India *does* get the majority of outsourced IT contracts. In the real world, it's not your uberskillz at programming that counts. It's your ability to communicate with your (english-speaking) clients on the other side of the world, and understanding their needs and requirements, that matters.

Not saying the Indians do a great job at it. I've had the (dis)pleasure of working on code created by an outsourced India company, and it was a big, unwieldy, backward-thinking mess. Still, with their relative proficiency in English, the Indian companies do have a much easier time than the Chinese.

solarz said:

Ummm... India *does* get the majority of outsourced IT contracts. In the real world, it's not your uberskillz at programming that counts. It's your ability to communicate with your (english-speaking) clients on the other side of the world, and understanding their needs and requirements, that matters.

Not saying the Indians do a great job at it. I've had the (dis)pleasure of working on code created by an outsourced India company, and it was a big, unwieldy, backward-thinking mess. Still, with their relative proficiency in English, the Indian companies do have a much easier time than the Chinese.

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Everything I stated is in the context of the future. Indians do get all the business because of default. My experience is Filipinos are way better in English and I know so many Filipino programmers but their problem is the corruption that prevents those industries from flourishing in the Phillipines. Indians don't dominate anywhere else because they don't know the language. So English skills won't matter because the world that is rising doesn't speak English. Like I said knowing English will be relegated to a convenience and not what's going to give countries the edge in the future. People should learn English but also learning other languages are just as important.

AssassinsMace said:

Everything I stated is in the context of the future. Indians do get all the business because of default. My experience is Filipinos are way better in English and I know so many Filipino programmers but their problem is the corruption that prevents those industries from flourishing in the Phillipines. Indians don't dominate anywhere else because they don't know the language. So English skills won't matter because the world that is rising doesn't speak English. Like I said knowing English will be relegated to a convenience and not what's going to give countries the edge in the future. People should learn English but also learning other languages are just as important.

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The world that is rising will use English as the main international language, India has a much more developed software industry than China this has nothing related to english, it is related simply to the Indian efford in that field, same is China, the chinese space program is better thanks to a larger budget and chinese determination to be world leaders in that field.


All nations have the same ability to create technology, however India and China by having economies larger than 3 billion dollars PPP, have the ability of financing most industries,

China and India are even in car industry, China leads the electrodomestic arena and the Computers area with brands like Lenovo, but india has developed computers too, electric cars too and has an economic grow of 10% so you can not expect Chinese will overtake english.

Chinese will increase in popularity but won`t replace english.

solarz said:

Ummm... India *does* get the majority of outsourced IT contracts. In the real world, it's not your uberskillz at programming that counts. It's your ability to communicate with your (english-speaking) clients on the other side of the world, and understanding their needs and requirements, that matters.

Not saying the Indians do a great job at it. I've had the (dis)pleasure of working on code created by an outsourced India company, and it was a big, unwieldy, backward-thinking mess. Still, with their relative proficiency in English, the Indian companies do have a much easier time than the Chinese.

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of the 2000 world`s biggest companies, India leads the BRIC nations in software technology, the reason is not english, is the national policy of the Indian government in supporting and promoting that industry, if China does promote the sofware industry as India does they will catch up like any other nation, however India at this moment has the largest software industry of the BRIC nations thanks to a correct industrial policy.

I worked for a US company that had direct experience with the Indian softaware industry. Like I said.. they have it by default. Even with their English skills, there was still frustrating miscommunication the American side experienced with the Indian side. I bet if the Philippines got their act together they would beat India hands down. I recently bought a Dell computer and had to call customer support. Yeah they spoke English but there was still something missing that made communication difficult. I called again on a another issue and it was out of the Phillipines and there was absolutely no problem at all communicating my issue.

Again if English were paramount, why is China leading the pack on emerging economies? Either the Chinese know English contrary to what is believed or English doesn't play the most signiificant factor. But the British and Indians recently wanted to ban Chinese pilots from international flights because they charged they couldn't speak English and was a danger. In that case English doesn't play a significant factor.

AssassinsMace said:

I worked for a US company that had direct experience with the Indian softaware industry. Like I said.. they have it by default. Even with their English skills, there was still frustrating miscommunication the American side experienced with the Indian side. I bet if the Philippines got their act together they would beat India hands down. I recently bought a Dell computer and had to call customer support. Yeah they spoke English but there was still something missing that made communication difficult. I called again on a another issue and it was out of the Phillipines and there was absolutely no problem at all communicating my issue.

Again if English were paramount, why is China leading the pack on emerging economies? Either the Chinese know English contrary to what is believed or English doesn't play the most signiificant factor. But the British and Indians recently wanted to ban Chinese pilots from international flights because they charged they couldn't speak English and was a danger. In that case English doesn't play a significant factor.

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Look there is a lot of misunderstanding about China and the emerging economies, India has advanced not because english, in mexico we speak english very well but in mexico we have no software industry of the size of India.

In fact i would say in terms of location, Intelectual property and labour costs mexico is probably the best place for US companies to invest, however in Mexico there is no software industry of the size on India, to blame China`s current state of on its english skills is just a excuse, programing is made by the universal language of math, not english, China can have a good software industry if the Chinese governement promotes it.

In Mexico, Russia, Argentina, Brazil and China there has not been such effort like in India.

It does not mean that other industries are not developed, China has developed almost all the needed high tech industries, but India too, Brazil also has very advanced industry, i can show you almost any type of technology from India, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina or Russia.

If you want i can give you links for Brazilian, Mexican, Russian, Indian computers; high tech robots, smart phones and computers from Mexico, jet engines from brazil, helicopters from Argentina, any technology that China makes is also made in India, Brazil and Russia and to a lesser extend in Argentina and Mexico.


All emerging markets have their own technology and india happens to be the leader in sale of software as China is leader of electrodmestic sales, it does not mean other nations do not have tehnology and as such their languages are not becoming also important in world trade.

Then we're sort of in agreement. It's the English that is paramount for a country to prosper in this globalized world crowd that is saying this. I'm saying a dominant language using English as an example is only a convenience and not paramount. So people looking for Chinese to become dominant shouldn't be thinking in those terms either. It is those that are multilingual that are going to have the edge in this world.

AssassinsMace said:

Then we're sort of in agreement. It's the English that is paramount for a country to prosper in this globalized world crowd that is saying this. I'm saying a dominant language using English as an example is only a convenience and not paramount. So people looking for Chinese to become dominant shouldn't be thinking in those terms either. It is those that are multilingual that are going to have the edge in this world.

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The main problem of Chinese is the writing system, it won`t be accepted in the western world, niether in India, middle east or Africa, second China is not the only developing nation that is emerging, so Chinese never will the lingua franca for spanish speakers when they do their business with Indians, arabs or Europeans, niether Europe will start using it, by international concensus English is the best mean of comunication due to its similarities to French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and its very easy writing system and already is popular due to its long history of being an international language.

Who really cares if Chinese won't be as easy to learn. That's everyone elses problem that wants to do business with China. While at the same time the Chinese will be learning everyone elses' language and having the advantage. If people don't want to learn Chinese, that's their loss. You don't see the Chinese so arrogant that they expect everyone to learn their language as if it's the only thing that matters in the future. That's why China beats India. The software industry hasn't helped India beat China. It's not like they hold a monopoly of the global software industry and China has no software because Indians aren't there to write it for them. Guess what? Chinese are doing software for China and they're on the top ranks of computer programming. I don't really see the loss that Indians aren't writing software for the Chinese. That's actually a plus for China. That's something the US can only wish these days to have Americans writing software for Americans. The fact is China is way ahead of all the developing world competitors. That wouldn't be if English were so important as the activist say.