DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - do you think future generations will learn chinese rather than english as a lingua fr

**Indoendris** · 08-25-2010, 07:37 AM

No, not only is it a harsh language but it is dissimilar (as an example, English was easily spread because of colonization, Arabic because of its similarity with other Afrasan and so on... The Sinitic family is relatively isolated to say the least, so an expansion of Chinese would not be as quick as Arabic and most Chinese have been [like the Russians] reluctant to colonization so far [as long as it leaves the continent]).

What's happening in Africa or Brazil cannot be compared to colonization, the only correlation could eventually be that of the USSR's influence on Baathist countries (and, why not; all other "non-aligned" countries) during the "cold" war.

So no, unless things shift greatly; I do not see people learning Chinese through interest of it becoming a new lingua franca... Some do it, but out of fashion, and we know what this means don't we:

-Dixit Oscar Wilde.

Exactly. Unless the Chinese force Mandarin on the rest of the world like Europeans did in the rest of the world during the 17th century and onwards, the majority won't learn it voluntarily unless the benefits somehow vastly outweight the effort in the near future. The Chinese would also need to drop that cumbersome pictograph-based writing system of theirs and switch to an alphabet, it would make learning their languages much easier.

08-25-2010, 07:37 AM	#39
Indoendris Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 453 Senior Member	No, not only is it a harsh language but it is dissimilar (as an example, English was easily spread because of colonization, Arabic because of its similarity with other Afrasan and so on... The Sinitic family is relatively isolated to say the least, so an expansion of Chinese would not be as quick as Arabic and most Chinese have been [like the Russians] reluctant to colonization so far [as long as it leaves the continent]). What's happening in Africa or Brazil cannot be compared to colonization, the only correlation could eventually be that of the USSR's influence on Baathist countries (and, why not; all other "non-aligned" countries) during the "cold" war. So no, unless things shift greatly; I do not see people learning Chinese through interest of it becoming a new lingua franca... Some do it, but out of fashion, and we know what this means don't we: -Dixit Oscar Wilde. Exactly. Unless the Chinese force Mandarin on the rest of the world like Europeans did in the rest of the world during the 17th century and onwards, the majority won't learn it voluntarily unless the benefits somehow vastly outweight the effort in the near future. The Chinese would also need to drop that cumbersome pictograph-based writing system of theirs and switch to an alphabet, it would make learning their languages much easier.
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