Chinese may replace English in this century

[tanklao]

I think I'll write an essay about biology. It'll be drivel

Can't a biologist be interested in linguistics? Drivel ! Because as far as I experenced, English does not serve as a good language in Biology as well as other sciences, can't I complain about this language? Can't a scientist give suggestions that any other languages such as Chinese may be a better language language in sciences? Language is a tool for us, and this tool doesn't work efficiently now. What can we do? Acording to your words we should tolerate, tolerate and tolerate, until oneday some linguists finally find that English is not a good language for sciences and advise us to change it. Right?

I am not going to write an essay of linguistics. That's not my job. I just want to express my ideas. I think everyone is entitled to express his/her idea freely. Of course you can write an essay about biology, and post it into a bilogical forum if you like.

[Lu]

When we were at that age, students mainly read simplied characters version as modern grammar [/b']version was not so available.

So you do realize that Chinese does have grammar?

As to your fish question, yes, from looking at the Chinese characters for all these fish I would immediately know it was some kind of fish, while from the English I wouldn't.

But. Usually such word are not seen all by themselves, but are encoutered in a certain context (while in a boat, in a book about fish, underneat a picture, etc), and I'm fairly sure that about 90% of the time the context would tell me not only what kind of fish it is, but also its approximate size and what kind of water it lives in.

And not all animal characters are that easy. If you didn't know these words, could you telll just by the characters what a 綠繡眼 is? Or a 大卷尾?

And of course you are fully entitled to your own ideas and opinions, but if they are based on wrong assumptions you shouldn't be offended if somebody points out you got it all wrong, especially if you post ideas about language at a forum with a lot of people who are interested in language. If someone says the world is flat they are free to do so, but they should not be surprised if they are laughed at.

[liuzhou]

Can't a biologist be interested in linguistics?

Yes, but should learn the basics before spouting off.

Acording to your words we should tolerate, tolerate and tolerate

Can you point out precisely where I said that? Or did you just make it up?

[tanklao]

Acording to your words we should tolerate, tolerate and tolerate

Can you point out precisely where I said that? Or did you just make it up?

Well, we knew you weren't a linguist.

I think I'll write an essay about biology. It'll be drivel.

My understanding of the words above is that I am not a linguist but I write this article about linguistics. So this article is drivel. I guess the words have such implications.

Or maybe it's just a misunderstanding. If so, I am sorry for my offence.

I think it's time for me to leave this forum now as I am not a linguist and I indeed have no rights to put too much comments on languages.

Generally, it's a pleasure discussion here and I learn a lot.

The spring festival is coming and I bless every buddy here a happy spring festival in advance!

May you a good learning of Chinese!

后会有期！

[zozzen]

English is a bad example to compare with Chinese - it's a huge language used in all the spheres of science, which accumulated too many words from many languages. Let me give you a better example - overseas students in Russia master Russian in one of preparation courses and go to universities together with native speakers - they are able to follow the lectures, discuss and study like any other student, it's similar to the situation in other European countries with students from all over the world, including China. How long does it take to get to this level in Chinese if you study in China?

It only shows you Russian is more closer to English than Chinese. In a comparison study linked by Imron previously, not only is Chinese listed in "the category for the most time-consuming language", Japanese, Thais, Vietnamese are also listed as the most or second most difficult language. Chinese would be puzzled by these comparisons, as they should find Vietnamese, Japanese and Thais overwhelmingly easier than any European languages, in which most of them are listed as the "easiest" language to English speakers.

But I would also believe these comparisons are meaningless. If English/ Chinese were really difficult how could our kids and uneducated people speak them so natively. It shouldn't be harder than the Calculous or C++ programming. But as a bad learner of many languages, I'm still pleased to see that my failure to learn a language is because of the language itself, instead of my poor motivation, laziness, or my IQ.

[adrianlondon]

If English/ Chinese were really difficult how could our kids and uneducated people speak them so natively.

If you add "read and write" into the mix, then you might have a problem.

[childbook88]

Interesting thread! There was a point made made a few posts ago where English Speakers can always understand each other. I disagree. Some of the English can get strange. One time my wife (from Taiwan) was talking to a student from India and they understood each other, but I really had to think about it. The choice of words was very different than a native speaker would use.

The Economist had a great article a while ago on English. I was teaching ESL at the time and had my TOEFL students read it. A world empire by other means - The triumph of English; The English language.(The spread of English). English grammar is challenging to teach, since most native speakers just know the grammar, and there are so many exceptions.

Many people I see learning Chinese are doing it due to business reasons, because of the growing economic power of China or cultural reasons.

My list of Reasons to Learn Chinese. I need to update it.

Ray

[atitarev]

Tanklao, don't leave the forum. You are fascinated by the Chinese, so is everybody here. You have said something people didn't agree on. However, you found a method to make Chinese make a lot of sense to you, so you can remember many things. I am sure if you stay longer, you will benefit from the Chinese forum and it will benefit from you.

Guys, be nicer, please.

[Lu]

English grammar is challenging to teach, since most native speakers just know the grammar, and there are so many exceptions.

I think English grammar is difficult to teach for native speakers who have never studied English grammar. But I think this goes for every language. I couldn't for the life of me explain when to use 'er' in Dutch, because despite the fact that I can use it perfectly I never learned the rules behind it. And countless are the times that a teacher of Chinese has to say Why, well, because that's how we say it and if you say it differently it just doesn't sound right. My English teachers in high school on the other hand, who had studied English in uni, could explain the whys of all kinds of grammar points just fine, I don't recall them ever saying 'just because'.

[atitarev]

You are right. Native speakers have often problems explaining why they say what they say. There are rules for everything, they maybe are not written yet. This includes the style rules and word combinations. If something looks like it's breaking the rule, then it must be another rule

A simple example that comes to mind:

这本书我看过了。 "I read this book"

At first, to a learner, it looks like the word order is incorrect. It's not SVO but OSV, however, it is a case of topic-prominence (very common in Japanese and Korean, usually marked with a -wa particle in Japanese).

So here, 这本书 is the topic; it can be translated as "As for this book, I read (it)".

I remember a Chinese teacher saying 'just because' in this case.

[trien27]

An average student of higher schools in China can easily read the books, say Lunyu, Laozi et al, that were written 2000 years ago

Most of those classics were transcribed into Modern Chinese from Ancient Chinese so people can read and understand it now. If you really were to see those ancient characters used by Confucius when he wrote or co-wrote the Analects, or when Laozi first wrote the Dao De Jing/ Tao Te Ch'ing, or when Sunzi wrote the Sunzi Bingfa or "Art of War" you might not even understand a word, even though you might recognize some characters based on their similarity to modern characters.

Tanklao:

rhombicosidodecahedron 二十面体 ershimianti

Really? Let me break it down for you:

In Chinese, 二十 ershi = 20 in English, which is "ikosi" [ικοσι] in Greek, which is Latinized to "icosi".

Latinized deca = "deka" [δεκα] in Greek = 10 in English.

hedron ['ηδρων] is either a cubic or 4 dimensional figure.

面 mian = face; surface in Chinese.

体 ti = body in Chinese.

I don't see where the "rhomb-" [ρομβ-?] part would appear in Chinese? rhomb- is a contraction of the word rhombus used as a word prefix.

So what's a rhombicosidecahedron [ρομβικοσιδεκαηδρων]?

A rhombus-like 3 or 4 dimensional figure with 30 ["ikosi" ικοσι = 20 in Greek, + "deka" δεκα = 10 in Greek] faces/ surfaces? This is what you get when the original Greek is bastardized and butchered.

This makes absolutely no sense in Chinese or English or any language.

proletaria 无产阶级 wuchanjieji

I believe the word is proletariat, not proletaria. It's Russian. In English 无产阶级 = classless or casteless, while I believe proletariat means "working class" in Russian?

The word bougeoisie is French: used to describe the "Middle Class" part of society.

Sorry, but I' ve used English, Simplified Chinese & Greek [in brackets] to respond. I can't type Greek accents on this computer.

[atitarev]

I believe the word is proletariat, not proletaria. It's Russian. In English 无产阶级 = classless or casteless, while I believe proletariat means "working class" in Russian?

It's not Russian by origin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat

[renzhe]

I believe the word is proletariat, not proletaria. It's Russian. In English 无产阶级 = classless or casteless

Nah, it's more like "class without means of production" (产=produce), or even "class without property".

[Marco]

Even Chinese people don't seem to agree with you

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/china

cheers

[SWWLiu]

I would like to pick up on some commentary of trien27 (thread #131) on Tanklao's initial post:

Tanklao:

Quote:

rhombicosidodecahedron 二十面体 ershimianti

Really? Let me break it down for you:

In Chinese' date=' 二十 ershi = 20 in English, which is "ikosi" [ικοσι'] in Greek, which is Latinized to "icosi".

Latinized deca = "deka" [δεκα] in Greek = 10 in English.

hedron ['ηδρων] is either a cubic or 4 dimensional figure.

面 mian = face; surface in Chinese.

体 ti = body in Chinese.

I don't see where the "rhomb-" [ρομβ-?] part would appear in Chinese? rhomb- is a contraction of the word rhombus used as a word prefix.

So what's a rhombicosidecahedron [ρομβικοσιδεκαηδρων]?

A rhombus-like 3 or 4 dimensional figure with 30 ["ikosi" ικοσι = 20 in Greek, + "deka" δεκα = 10 in Greek] faces/ surfaces? This is what you get when the original Greek is bastardized and butchered.

This makes absolutely no sense in Chinese or English or any language.

I wish to point out that the 3D geometric solid "rhombicosidodecahedron" has a very precise mathematical definition in English (or in Chinese):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombicosidodecahedron

which shows that it is one of the thirteen "semiregular polyhedra" known as Archimedean Solids (which are slightly more complicated than the five "regular polyhedra" known as Platonic Solids).

Please note that the rhombicosidodecahedron has 62 "faces"! It is a convex figure in 3D (not a 4D figure).

The English name, as well as the purported Chinese name, is by necessity also an abbreviation, enough to disambiguate but not enough to completely specify. So, there is no "bastardization" involved or "butchering" intended in the creation of this term.

Of the 62 (regular polygonal) faces, 20 are equilateral triangles (hence the "icosi" or "icosa", for twenty), 30 are squares (hence the prefix "rhomb-", for rhombus, of which a square is a special kind), and 12 are regular pentagons (hence the "dodeca" or "dodeka", for twelve). There are altogether 60 vertices and 120 edges on the surface of the rhombicosidodecahedron ("polygons" are formed by straight line segments; "regular" means all sides in a particular polygon have the same length). The paragraph below from the Wikipedia articles says it very well:

"The name rhombicosidodecahedron refers to the fact that,

like the icosidodecahedron, it has the same number of triangular

faces lying in the same planes, and the same number of pentagonal

faces lying in the same planes, as the icosahedron and the

dodecahedron, respectively; the rhomb- prefix signifies that the

triangles and pentagons are separated by squares."

See the following links for the icosahedron and dodecahedron (which are two of the five Platonic Solids and to which the rhombicosidodecahedron can be related and compared):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosahedron

with 20 equilateral triangular faces only

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecahedron

with 12 regular pentagonal faces only

By the way, polygons are always two-dimensional; polyhedra are always three-dimensional; their generalization is the term "polytope" made popular by the

late Canadian geometer Coxeter, which can have any integer dimension, including 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 and above. So, the "hedron" (or "hedra" for plural) part of the word signifies exactly three-dimensional.

Sorry to have given so many perhaps overly technical details, but my point is that both terms, though "abbreviated", in English and in Chinese, when properly, carefully, and unambiguously identified, may be made to represent exactly the same mathematical/geometrical entity. So, the argument on which one is better in terms of "precision" may be irrelevant here. (It should again be noted, however, the rhombicosidodecahedron has 62 faces, not 20 as suggested by Tanklao. Also, trien27 mistook "deca" for "dodeca".)

[tanklao]

rhombicosidodecahedron 二十面体 ershimianti

Really? Let me break it down for you:

In Chinese, 二十 ershi = 20 in English, which is "ikosi" [ικοσι] in Greek, which is Latinized to "icosi".

Latinized deca = "deka" [δεκα] in Greek = 10 in English.

hedron ['ηδρων] is either a cubic or 4 dimensional figure.

面 mian = face; surface in Chinese.

体 ti = body in Chinese.

I don't see where the "rhomb-" [ρομβ-?] part would appear in Chinese? rhomb- is a contraction of the word rhombus used as a word prefix.

So what's a rhombicosidecahedron [ρομβικοσιδεκαηδρων]?

A rhombus-like 3 or 4 dimensional figure with 30 ["ikosi" ικοσι = 20 in Greek, + "deka" δεκα = 10 in Greek] faces/ surfaces? This is what you get when the original Greek is bastardized and butchered.

This makes absolutely no sense in Chinese or English or any language.

Can everyone break this word down in English? In Chinese,of course,YES, although the exact meaning is not as specific as SWWLiu discribed, but it is absolutely enough for a layman who is not going to study on math.

I know that most of term can be broken down. The problem lies in that how can a layman break them down? Can everyone break down, say,

schizophrenia 精神分裂症 jingshenfenliezheng,

senile dementia 老年痴呆症laonianchidaizheng,

in English?

In Chinese, however, it's quite easy for everyone to break them down and understand their basic meaning.

I listed the vocabulory in order to support the idea that Chinese may be more suitable for sciences in the aspect of termilogy. Obviously it's easier for everyone to understand the basic meaning of a scientific term in Chinese than in English.

[Bluemale_skl]

I was born in Shanghai, and I have lived and studied in Shanghai for 18 years. As a Chinese, personally I was glad to have read, accidentally, what you had shared with us. And I have patiently read through all the replies posted by you guys. And it would be my honour to share a few comments on these posts.

To tanklao 1 The pronunciation of Chinese has changed a lot, but not that stable in fact. I have never stepped out of Shanghai, and when I communicate with people from other provinces in CNA, you can hardly imagine how horrible it is even if those don't speak their dialects. So many accents there are that common communication comes to be difficlult, and cause something thoroughly ambiguous. And honestly speaking, we do have some discriminations against some particular accents.

2 That characters of Chinese remained almost the same is true, and I would like to say that modern Chinese has much more charcaters than ancient Chinese does ,which is a significant improvement that enriches Chinese as a language itself. And it is supposed to be remained.

3 Chinese English ,acadmically stands for speaking and using English in the way of expression in CHinese. I suppose you can improve Chinese by exploring English in so-called CHinese version.

4 Written Chinese is imformative because of its special characters.Written Chinese saves papers but not ink.

5 That Chinese runs faster is definitely incorrect. That You PERSONALLY attributes Chinese students of high schools getting more Olympic prizes in science to CHinese is quite ridiculous. We practise a lot, and we are supposed to deserve it. What we are learning in middle schools and high schools are basically what you are acquiring in universities. We are not more intelligentt but more diligent, and it is a pity that you think we are gifted with the language we speak. It is a truth universally acknowledged that English is more logical than Chinese, and I suppose you guys, obviously haven't put any or enough efforts, and that's the problem. The speed of reading and memorizing in English is not so poor as far as I concerned. While my English is poor in Shanghai, personally I can memorize an English passage, approximately 600 words in 2-3 minutes COMPLETELY, and our English exams require the ability to reading and finishing the relavant exercises of 7 passages within 30 minutes. If English cannot meet the demands of those tasks, how can we do pretty well? Spend less time on watching Big Brother and you'll achieve as well.

6 Honestly speaking, we hate the vocabulary of English, and it is a hugh challenge. The advantage of Chinese is that you make it yourself!!!

7 If CHinese is to replace English, we'll never stop our step forward. We'll be still learning English which has a wonderful history. English will never be thoroughly replaced!

[Meng Lelan]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that English is more logical than Chinese,

Try telling that to my deaf students in my classes here in the US.

They'll overwhelm you with examples of how illogical English is.

[tanklao]

I was born in Shanghai, and I have lived and studied in Shanghai for 18 years. As a Chinese, personally I was glad to have read, accidentally, what you had shared with us. And I have patiently read through all the replies posted by you guys. And it would be my honour to share a few comments on these posts.

To tanklao 1 The pronunciation of Chinese has changed a lot, but not that stable in fact. I have never stepped out of Shanghai, and when I communicate with people from other provinces in CNA, you can hardly imagine how horrible it is even if those don't speak their dialects. So many accents there are that common communication comes to be difficlult, and cause something thoroughly ambiguous. And honestly speaking, we do have some discriminations against some particular accents.

2 That characters of Chinese remained almost the same is true, and I would like to say that modern Chinese has much more charcaters than ancient Chinese does ,which is a significant improvement that enriches Chinese as a language itself. And it is supposed to be remained.

3 Chinese English ,acadmically stands for speaking and using English in the way of expression in CHinese. I suppose you can improve Chinese by exploring English in so-called CHinese version.

4 Written Chinese is imformative because of its special characters.Written Chinese saves papers but not ink.

5 That Chinese runs faster is definitely incorrect. That You PERSONALLY attributes Chinese students of high schools getting more Olympic prizes in science to CHinese is quite ridiculous. We practise a lot, and we are supposed to deserve it. What we are learning in middle schools and high schools are basically what you are acquiring in universities. We are not more intelligentt but more diligent, and it is a pity that you think we are gifted with the language we speak. It is a truth universally acknowledged that English is more logical than Chinese, and I suppose you guys, obviously haven't put any or enough efforts, and that's the problem. The speed of reading and memorizing in English is not so poor as far as I concerned. While my English is poor in Shanghai, personally I can memorize an English passage, approximately 600 words in 2-3 minutes COMPLETELY, and our English exams require the ability to reading and finishing the relavant exercises of 7 passages within 30 minutes. If English cannot meet the demands of those tasks, how can we do pretty well? Spend less time on watching Big Brother and you'll achieve as well.

6 Honestly speaking, we hate the vocabulary of English, and it is a hugh challenge. The advantage of Chinese is that you make it yourself!!!

7 If CHinese is to replace English, we'll never stop our step forward. We'll be still learning English which has a wonderful history. English will never be thoroughly replaced!

Thanks for your reply.

It's only my belief that Chinese will replace English in the future, and I share it here.

Thanks for everyone's reply.

[tanklao]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that English is more logical than Chinese,

Try telling that to my deaf students in my classes here in the US.

They'll overwhelm you with examples of how illogical English is.

Esperanto is the most logical language in the world. It's a pity that few people use it.

The way an Esperanto words is made is somewhat like that a Chinese word is made. So Esperanto is really “爱斯不难读“ which means "love it, and it's not hard to read".