will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

Any language will fail, if it's too rigid.

Even English accepted latin characters, such as Pi, lambda, rho for much of mathematical / scientific notation.

One good thing chinese did was to learn from other languages and change from a "Top to Down" writing style to the normal "Left to Right". Otherwise imagine the additional mess in books as well on computer.

I am not sure if they would have further benefitted by simply doing what Malaysia (or perhaps Vietnam, also) did i.e. same language to speak, but they write it using English alphabet.

I believe (though not sure) if they do use as much latin, as English (i.e. Pi, lambda, epsilon etc). If they don't, I guess the chinese translators would get crazy translating schrodinger's equations .... and well what not. Ghosh, do they use i (for iota in complex numbers) or some chinese equivalent? Indeed the basic mathematical numbers itself .. are they simply 1,2,3.. etc. or again something chinese !!!!!

Just thought, the chinese would be better off by adopting an "English with Chinese characteristics".



It will be a just compromise between patriotism and pragmatism.

But, yes, it's entirely their choice.

My friend told me of an incident at her Thai kick-boxing gym last night. One of the instructors was sparring and then all of the sudden his color changed and he dropped to the floor loud enough for everyone in the gym to hear. The guy suffered a heart attack or something and wasn't breathing. Luckily there was an emergency room doctor that was a member of the gym there to administer CPR and revived the guy. The guy was Portuguese in origin but was English capable. But in his delirium after being revived he was only speaking Portuguese and no one could understand him and the people at the gym didn't or couldn't find anyone to that spoke Portuguese. This reminded me of the discussions that were going on in this thread. I'm sure the one language only advocates will argue this is why there should be only one language. But that's unrealistic and that's not going to happen given how many people in the world don't speak English as their native tongue. This is a case where the dominant language argument doesn't work. There's no fault here but if people were encouraged to speak more than one language instead of arguing just for one, helping this guy would've been more easier. And just imagine other similar scenarios where people are naturally more comfortable speaking their native tongue? And who do you think is going to win out in the future? The people who live in fear of the Tower of Babel or the people open to more languages?