Chinese may replace English in this century

[mr.stinky]

you're missing the story-telling function on them thar radicals. just picture in your mind

walking through a village market. notice the fish guts and and sheep carcasses that have

been sitting in the sun for hours? inhale the delicate aroma!!! that says "freeeeeesh"

in any language!!

[tanklao]

I want to pile on with some points against this arguement which seems to come up every few months or so.

1. One point you tried to say Chinese is easy to write.

On the touchstone reality litnus test, many chinese in the 20s can't write moderately complicated characters as they are so used to typing them.

This is not the case with English if they speak the word they can write the word for the most part.

2. The distincition that all chinese is written the same is incorrect as well, as those chinese in the wonderful province of Taiwan seem to still use traditional characters that can be guessed at but not always completely understood by the mainlanders. HK still likes traditional characters even if they are being forced to change.

3. As a previous poster said , every english speaker can understand the written english perfectly (as long as they have the vocab) and most can understand people orally. Orally it is not the case with Chinese Guangdong dialect versus BJ.

4. Chinese has 5 tones (4 tones and the unaccented 1) to English's 2(stressed unstressed). These tones in chinese affect the meaning of the word where as in english they do not, but simply add to emotional meaning. Chinese limited number of words, and often eliminated use of the Subject because it is implied causes Chinese to be more easily confused that English which requires the subject to be considered proper. Also in English even if the stress is incorrect listerners can still understand the meaning.

5. I give you the saving paper argument. This is probably true that books in Chinese would save paper, however this should not bear upon whether Chinese is easier to learn than English.

Can you respond to these points ?

thanks,

Simon

1 it's widely admitted that English spelling system is the worst one in phonetical languages. Most Chinese do NOT write stroke by stroke, most of times because of writing convinience and sometime perhaps becase of forgeting the exact writing, but this do not become a problem for other person to read it. This is almost the same as English spelling mistake which doesn't affect reading. I can speak lots of words that I can't write exactly. The spelling system of English is really a torment. It's ironical that a phonetical language which the spelling is not phonetical.

2 It's not a big problem for most Chinese to understand simplied and traditional Chinese between which the difference is less than 30% where most are regular and simply.

3 This point is not true. You obviously neglect English speakers from Asia, South America and Africa. Lots of foreigner can not understand the introdution written by China's English experts. The same case is very common in Japan, Korea, Singapore et al. Orally western people are quite hard to understand the English spoken by most Indians, especially the ones not from New Delhi. I was told by a Sri Lankan that he is quite hard to understand Indian English, although Sri Lanka is adjasent to India.

4 Some linguistists argue that 5 tones is an advantage as more tones can express more feeling and emotion. Whether Multi-tone is an advantage or disadavantage is still conversial.

Chinese do NOT have what western language called grammar (grammatical inflection) as I have mentioned in the Article. It was the early left-linguist who gave the grammar to Chinese according to western language during the time when Chinese elite were "studying" the western's. This is very radiculous!!! In most cases we don't confused. If you have a survey, I confidently bet that very few people are confused when they read or heard an "incomplete sentence". When reading the Romance of Three Kingdom, in which the writting was not affected by what is called "grammar", very few people feel confused by the lack of "grammar". In western language the grammar makes lots redundance.

5 Recent years' Chinese teaching programs have witnessed the simplicity of Chinese. Most Chinese leaners have experenced the simplicity of spoken Chinese. The diffulty of written Chinese for westerners is due to the different writting system. I believe that if western kids start to learn Chinese at Grade 5 in primery school, written Chinese is very easy for them. Even an adult can learn writing very well, if he/she really put heart and soul in it. Of course learning Chinese is more difficult than learning, say, French for English speakers, as Chinese is a "completely foreign" language for them. What I want to say is that Chinese is not that difficult as it is supposed to be now by the saying "as hard as Chinese."

Yes, and I personally find the sheep-fish 鲜 to be particularly tasty. Luckily I know that, unlike English, Chinese doesn't have any potentially confusing characters, and you can always tell the meaning, just by looking at the component parts.

This is not true! above 90% of all Chinese characters are 形声字xingshengzi-s which imply the pronuncitation. About 70% of the common used characters are 形声字xingshengzi-s. This ratio is already very great. And most of the uncommon used characters are 形声字xingshengzi-s. When meeting the uncommon used words, English tells mainly how to pronounce but Chinese tells you both the pronuciation and the meaning. If you don't know the meaning, then what sense can you make by knowing the pronunciation?

[chenpv]

Yes, and I personally find the sheep-fish 鲜 to be particularly tasty.

That is a very good point there since language evolves and meanings of certain characters change over time. But, excuse for my pickiness, according to Kangxi Zidian and Shuowen Jiezi, 鲜 was indeed a fish from Kingdom 貉 long long time ago. In this sense, Mr. stinky seemed to have vividly pictured its etymology. How would anyone not to expect 貉men inhaling the freshness of some sun-sauted fish guts and and sheep carcasses?

replace coal-burning power plants with chinese-burning ones?

Give us a break, why would any sensible capitalists choose chinese-burning ones if they can make much more out of round-shaped fatty-acid-enriched westerner-burning ones?

Edit: BTW, tanklao, Every post is a crucial building brick of our most cherished edifice of harmonious society.

[liuzhou]

Who told you that English was 'a phonetical language'?

Chinese doesn't have grammar? Now that is 'radiculous".

Keep going.

[tanklao]

Also, English is my native tongue (American-English). I've never had a problem communicating with English speaking people from other countries, though I guess I've never spoken to Singpaore-English speaking or African-English speaking people. What is African-English? I have a good friend who is Kenyan, and she speaks superb English with a slight British accent (which is probably diminishing since she lives in the U.S.).

Also, it is very easy for an English speaker to understand a foreignor learning English even when they are pronouncing incorrectly. The same doesn't seem to be true for chinese, but maybe that's because I just pronounce chinese very poorly. Also, I can go anywhere in the United States and there very little differences in the spoken and written English. China is approximately the same size, and that definitely does not hold true for Chinese

Who you have met are well-trained English speakers from no English speaking conturies. Have you ever speak to the average Indian people and listen to their English?

The English pronunciation of Chinese people has not yet become a very big problem, but it will become a problem sooner or later.

Who told you that English was 'a phonetical language'?

Keep going.

Sorry, I made a mistake. I should make a correction of replacing all "phenetical language" by "phonographic languages". I hope this do not affect your reading.

[liuzhou]

I hope this do not affect your reading.

No. It's still drivel.

[Lugubert]

1 it's widely admitted that English spelling system is the worst one in phonetical languages.

Only by people who haven’t tried Tibetan.

3 This point [every english speaker can understand the written english perfectly … and most can understand people orally'] is not true. You obviously neglect English speakers from Asia, South America and Africa. Lots of foreigner can not understand the introdution written by China's English experts. The same case is very common in Japan, Korea, Singapore et al.

Foreigners who know English will understand correctly written English.

4 Some linguistists argue that 5 tones is an advantage as more tones can express more feeling and emotion. Whether Multi-tone is an advantage or disadavantage is still conversial.

Who says it is controversial? Foreigners have severe difficulties in learning Norwegian or Swedish, and we have only two tones. Five is magnitudes worse. Moreover, if you already use five tones in neutral language, that reduces your ability to use those tones to convey emotion.

Chinese do NOT have what western language called grammar as I have mentioned in the Article. It was the early left-linguist who gave the grammar to Chinese according to western language during the time when Chinese elite were "studying" the western's. This is very radiculous!!!

The ridiculous part is your claim. All languages have grammar, that is, rules for how sentences are constructed. Morphology is almost absent in Chinese, but the syntax more than compensates for it.

5 Recent years' Chinese teaching programs have witnessed the simplicity of Chinese. Most Chinese leaners have experenced the simplicity of spoken Chinese. The diffulty of written Chinese for westerners is due to the different writting system.

You write as if writing doesn’t belong to the language! To acquire full language skills, you have to learn speaking, listening, reading and writing (and also get some understanding of the culture(s) where the language is used).

I think there's no chance that Chinese (or Hindi, for that matter) will replace English in the coming few centuries. But Chinese skills will probably increase markedly in importance as a useful addition to a qualified CV.

[imron]

But, excuse for my pickiness, according to Kangxi Zidian and Shuowen Jiezi, 鲜 was indeed a fish from Kingdom 貉 long long time ago.

Your pickiness is allowed, but only if you allow me to be equaly picky and point out that your average "8 years old kid" probably isn't going to know this.

This is not true!

Really? Well, that's the problem with the internet, sarcasm doesn't always come across so well.

Anyway the point I was trying to make is that you're picking extreme examples and cases from English to demonstrate it's difficulty, but ignoring the fact that Chinese also has many peculiarities.

Chinese tells you both the pronuciation and the meaning.

This is highly misleading. At best Chinese only gives a rough approximation of both meaning and pronunciation, and at worst you have absolutely no idea of either. Take the character I listed above 鲜. How is anyone seeing that character for the first time supposed to know that it means "fresh" and is pronounced xiān, (and that sometimes it means "rare" and is pronounced xiǎn)?

If you don't know the meaning, then what sense can you make by knowing the pronunciation?

Meaning can almost always be determined from context. The same cannot be said for pronuciation.

[hamihaha]

Look what I found on Chinesepod's forum:

Why Chinese is much easier to learn than French?

... because French vocabulary has so many words!

For example animals names. Where Chinese needs just a combinaison of few descriptive characters (male, female, small) French needs dozens of different words. Let's illustrates with two species pig and sheep.

　　　猪 (male + pig) cochon

　　公猪 (male + pig) verrat

　　母猪 (female + pig) truie

　　小猪 (small + pig) porcelet

　　野猪 (wild + pig) sanglier

　母野猪 (female + wild + pig) laie

　小野猪 (small + wild + pig) marcassin

　　　羊 (sheep) mouton

　　公羊 (male + sheep) bélier

　　母羊 (female + sheep) brebis

　　小羊 (small + sheep) agneau

　小母羊 (small + female + sheep) agnelle

　　山羊 (hill + sheep) chèvre

　公山羊 (male + hill + sheep) bouc

　小山羊 (small + hill + sheep) cabris

As you see for "pig", you have 7 different words in French : cochon, verrat, truie, porcelet, sanglier, laie, marcassin, and only 1 in Chinese : 猪, which you add descriptions (male, female...).

Another way to explain it, if you now how to say "horse" 马 in Chinese, you automatically know how to say "mare" 母马 (female + horse) and "foal" 小马 (small + horse). But if you know "cheval" (horse) in French, you have no way to guess "jument" (mare) and "poulain" (foal) which are totally different words.

Source: http://www.chinese-tools.com/forum/read.html?q=17%2C18462

There is one response of someone who tried to learn both Chinese and French, and she seems to agree...

[tanklao]

I am glad that someone is standing by my side.

Lots of no-Chinese speakers who do not experence the simplicity of Chinese post too much comments on Chinese. Lots of Chinese speakers who are lack of confidence on their own languages just follow that somewhat misleading comments. This is why the dicussion is going almost in one direction.

Do you think it is stupid to make so many ir-relative words to discribe, say, pig or fish.

In this aspect the simplicity of Chinese it is obvious. I do NOT intend to choose some words just on purpose to prove my idea. These examples are everywhere in Chinese. This is a fact!

[gougou]

Do you think it is stupid to make so many ir-relative words to discribe, say, pig or fish.

Good point there. But wouldn't the same be true about using tens of thousands of characters where other languages make do with 26?

Also, I'm surprised the name Moser hasn't appeared in this thread yet.

[tanklao]

This is highly misleading. At best Chinese only gives a rough approximation of both meaning and pronunciation, and at worst you have absolutely no idea of either. Take the character I listed above 鲜. How is anyone seeing that character for the first time supposed to know that it means "fresh" and is pronounced xiān, (and that sometimes it means "rare" and is pronounced xiǎn)?

I have to admit that character itself does NOT completely tell you the full meaning and the exact pronunciation, but at least it helps the learners memorize it. Moreover most uncommon used characters can almost imply the meanings.

By the way I should point out that 鲜 is not a 形声字xingshengzi. Instead it's a 会意字huiyizi. It can be explained like this it is a property of fish 鱼 and it is beautiful as the radical 羊 always means. Supposed that you are in the situation of acient time, you can easily guess that it means "fresh" and easily memerize it.

How can you do with "F-R-E-S-H"?

I would like to give you another example.

名 (míng) (a 会意字huiyizi)

名(name)= 夕 (night，a semantic part）+ 口 (mouth, a semantic part)

The character may be created in the following situation. One man is guarding for his tribe at night, and he could not tell who is it coming in the dark, and he must open his mouth to ask “what is your name”?

Useful Phrases:

姓名 (xìng míng ) name

名声 (míng shēng ) reputation

名片 (míng piàn ) visiting card, business card

名人 (míng rén) famous persons

豹（bào）( a 形声字xingshengzi)

Learn the character “豸” first.

The character "豸" is a picture of a animal like a cat with four feet. It also transformed into "犭", called fǎnquǎnpángr and used only on the left.

We will find that many animals such as "猫 狗 猪 狐 狼 狮" share the bound radical "犭".

豹＝豸（a semantic part has something to do with beasts）+

勺 （a phonetic part）

The character "豹" pronounces bào, and "勺", its phonetic part, pronounces sháo. You will find that they share the same vowel but with different consonants and tones. xíng shēng zì (semantic-phonetic characters) is said to occupy over 75 percent of Chinese characters. Nealy most of phonetic components have more or less connections with the characters that they combine. It derserves a mention that the pronouncations vary a lot over thoundsands of years and for some xíng shēng zì , sometimes it is difficult to tell the connection of a phonetic component with the compound charactes that it forms.

Useful Phrases:

豹子（bào zi）leopard

金钱豹（jīn qián bào）leopard with ring-like spots

海豹 (hǎi bào ) seal

吃了豹子胆儿（chī le bào zǐ dǎnr ）

eating the gall of a leopard, used to describe one is unusual courageous or bold.

To learn more click here or http://www.journeytochinese.com/read-198.html

I think there's no chance that Chinese (or Hindi, for that matter) will replace English in the coming few centuries. But Chinese skills will probably increase markedly in importance as a useful addition to a qualified CV.

I don't agree with you! As China's rising-up and the convinience to use Chinese, It will definitly one day replace English as the leading global language. And this may happen in this century.

Do you think it is stupid to make so many ir-relative words to discribe, say, pig or fish.

Good point there. But wouldn't the same be true about using tens of thousands of characters where other languages make do with 26?

it is not the same. Characters carry meaning but the alphabets do NOT! As I have listed in the article that every Chinese speaker knows the meaning of 葡萄酒putaojiu even if he/she has never seen or heard about it. But can every English speakers knows the meaning of baijiu in the same situation? If you say baijiu is too Chinese, the same is true to 鲟鱼xunyu vs sturgeon.

[md1101]

I

Who you have met are well-trained English speakers from no English speaking conturies. Have you ever speak to the average Indian people and listen to their English?

The English pronunciation of Chinese people has not yet become a very big problem, but it will become a problem sooner or later.

Firstly, I must say that I DO understand the Singaporeans, Indians and Malaysian speakers I come across. When I don't understand them.. it's not because their country sat down and decided to change the language to suit their needs... it's because they (and I'm speaking about individuals here) haven't yet learnt the correct pronounciation or words or grammar. Baisically it's because they still suck at the language.

I could single out plenty of foreigners and say "Hey, look at this Australian over here. He's trying to speak Chinese but I can't understand a word. It must be the new Australian Chinese. Wow, there are so many different forms of Chinese now. Good thing we have English because there is only one type of English."

Is Chinese becoming more useful? YES because the country is becoming more powerful and economically influential.

[tanklao]

3 This point [every english speaker can understand the written english perfectly … and most can understand people orally]

it is not true. You obviously neglect English speakers from Asia, South America and Africa. Lots of foreigner can not understand the introdution written by China's English experts. The same case is very common in Japan, Korea, Singapore et al.

Foreigners who know English will understand correctly written English.

Then what is correct English??? Some british experts, I have met at an English corner in Wuhan, critisized that American English is wrong English. Since American English is now considered to be correct, why are other Englishes incorrect? So it's no sense to justify who is correct or who is wrong?

The spread of English is making more and more what is called wrong English which has handicaped international communication, while the spread of Mandaren in China and even through out the world is making more and more interesting Chinese which helps communication. I have pointed out the differences between Chinese dialect are not less than that between European languages. I am a Minnanese and my mother toungue is Minnanese which is considered to be a different language from Mandaren Chinese by the International Standard Orgnization. I know the differences between Chinese dialect clearly.

When I don't understand them.. it's not because their country sat down and decided to change the language to suit their needs.

Austrilia is developing Austrilia English. Isn't that true? Indian is doing the same thing, see here. Lots of Chinese are plaining to do it, refer here. You are in the English speaking country, and you don't understand the agnoy of learning English, and neither do you understand why people want to change English. I am a Minnanese, I learned Mandaren Chinese, English, a little Japanese and a bit French. I clearly better understand the torment of learning English.

[roddy]

I wonder what British Chinese will look like. And French Chinese. And American Chinese. And Kenyan Chinese. And Chilean Chinese. They're all going to be diverse, it'll be hard for people from these countries to communicate with each other. They'll need an international language for communication . . .

[tanklao]

I wonder what British Chinese will look like. And French Chinese. And American Chinese. And Kenyan Chinese. And Chilean Chinese. They're all going to be diverse, it'll be hard for people from these countries to communicate with each other. They'll need an international language for communication

As long as people use characters, I'm sure it's not a big problem.

[muyongshi]

As long as people use characters, I'm sure it's not a big problem.

I love how in this one sentence you have managed to completely show that your entire argument is based on circular reasoning and have so made obvious enough to destroy your entire argument. So basically what you are saying is that the fact that both Cantonese and Mandarin use characters means that there is no communication problems between them. Yet they can't actually understand what is being spoken. Your argument stinks like dead fish!!!

[Marco]

This all remembers me of what my grandfather told me about world war two, he was forced to speak German, because German was the greatest language in the world. My Korean classmate told me about how their grandparents had to line up and pick A Japanese name in world war two because Japanese was the greatest language in world. TanKlao, you look down up on other peoples languages and you are totally not confident about your own language, what are you trying to prove? That English and any other European Languages is crap and the Chinese language is the best language in the world? The way you are arguing makes me think of what Margaret Thacher once said: “If you have to tell some one you are a lady then your not”. 汉语也好， 英语也好，法语也好， 荷兰语也好，它们“都能很好地为本民族的全体成员服务。。。。。可以互相比较， 但不要较量长短”（张志公）。TanKlao, don’t be silly and respect other languages a bit more as we respect yours.(why would we otherwise try to learn it)

祝你新年快乐， 万事如意

Marco

[tanklao]

I love how in this one sentence you have managed to completely show that your entire argument is based on circular reasoning and have so made obvious enough to destroy your entire argument. So basically what you are saying is that the fact that both Cantonese and Mandarin use characters means that there is no communication problems between them. Yet they can't actually understand what is being spoken. Your argument stinks like dead fish!!!

In the speaking sense, what Contonese to Mandaren is what French to English. But the fact is that there is almost no problem for Mandaren speakers to understand written Contonese without learning Contonese. I have enjoyed lots of vidios that were produced in Hongkong and captioned in Contonese. There is very few problems for me to understand it. Can an English speaker understand French without learning?

Contonese people should learn Mandaren if they want to communicate with Mandaren speakers just in the same way that Frenchmen should learn English if they want to communicate with English speakers.

[muyongshi]

You so missed the point of my post...

and by the way comparing english to french like madarin to cantonese is comparing apples and oranges. The only similarity is that they are languages....french and english do NOT have the same writing system