Do Chinese Have To Know English To Use Blackberries?

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear all,

Snippets from an article on "Globish", a mishmash of English and other tongues:

From Barack Obama's simple "Yes We Can" presidential campaign slogan to countless Chinese people sending text messages using English letters, "Globish" is fast becoming the dominant language of this century.

So says British author Robert McCrum in his new book "Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language," which expounds on the mishmash of English and other tongues that connects people from Beijing to New York.

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Other languages that might have become globally dominant are different. For example, he said, "Mandarin Chinese is very pure, it is very refined and it is not hospitable."

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"The educated Chinese middle class are acquiring Blackberries like there is no tomorrow," McCrum said. "If you are Chinese and you are having to master the (English language) keyboard to send texts, you are being herded into Globish."

Learning A New Language? Try Globish

Do Chinese people text in English amongst...er...among themselves?

Is inputting Chinese so difficult that the Chinese all fall into using English as a default?

How do they input Chinese on all these electronic gadgets and computers?

Wubi, zhuyin, etc?

Pinyin?

Pinyin isn't English and neither are the letters English.

Or does knowing the Roman letters on a keyboard equate to knowing English?

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[Lu]

Now I've never seen a blackberry up close, so I might be wrong, but is the keyboard of a blackberry really specifically English, or is it simply a qwerty-keyboard, and does the writer of the article mistakenly believe that you can only type English on those?

Speaking for computers and cellphones: no, typing Chinese is not difficult at all. On the mainland, the main input system is hanyu pinyin, which can be typed at any standard keyboard as long as the computer has an input program. In Taiwan, the main system is zhuyin fuhao (bopomofo), which uses a different alphabet (if you can call it that), so it's best typed on a keyboard that has bopomofo symbols on it too. There are many other input systems on which you can find a lot of information elsewhere.

Chinese sometimes do use English, if the computer or the program they are using doesn't support Chinese. But mostly they vastly prefer Chinese.

Pinyin isn't English and neither are the letters English.

This is very true, but unfortunately many, many people don't know it. Many people, among both Chinese speakers and English speakers, believe that the alphabet = English, instead of a way to write many different languages, including English.

[Erbse]

There is a Chinese device software for BlackBerry, which turns all programs into Chinese versions and also allows pinyin input. On some BlackBerry other input methods are also available. Input methods for Japanese and Korean also exist. The BlackBerry keyboard has a similar layout as everyone knows from a regular computer keyboard.

[eatfastnoodle]

snip

No way in hell, because there simply aren't enough people with enough English fluency out there. English is taught, but overwhelming majority of people would never really use English in their entire professional life , even if they achieve fluency at school, chances are they'll forget it not much longer after they graduate. Would you use something that only allows you to communicate in a language in which you can barely compose a coherent sentence?

[Brian Barker]

Globish reminds me of another project called "Basic English" Unfortunately this failed, because native English speakers could not remember which words not to use

So it's time to move forward and adopt a neutral non-national language, taught universally in schools worldwide,in all nations.

As a native English speaker, I would prefer Esperanto

Your readers may be interested in the following video at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

[roddy]

So it's time to move forward and adopt a neutral non-national language, taught universally in schools worldwide,in all nations.

Sounds suspiciously like English to me . . .

[Erbse]

So it's time to move forward and adopt a neutral non-national language, taught universally in schools worldwide,in all nations.

As a native English speaker, I would prefer Esperanto

English is not my native language, but I'd still favor English simply because it's so simple to learn. Esperanto is not really easier than English and at the same time there is already so much knowledge out there written in English. At the moment it's just a natural choice and any not yet retired person should learn it right now.

[Lu]

English is not my native language, but I'd still favor English simply because it's so simple to learn. Esperanto is not really easier than English and at the same time there is already so much knowledge out there written in English. At the moment it's just a natural choice and any not yet retired person should learn it right now.

I have to disagree here. I learned a bit of Esperanto at some point, and taken on its own it's a lot more simple than English. Just look at spelling, for example, which is absolutely crazy in English, and absolutely simple in Esperanto.

English is more convenient to learn because there is such a wealth of material for it, but if circumstances were equal, Esperanto would be the better choice. Even though it still wouldn't be fair to speakers of non-European languages, because despite claims that Esperanto is a world language, it's mostly based on European languages.