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Will Chinese really take over English and Spanish?
When I left my high-flying public relations job to travel, learn Spanish and write, more than a few people said: "what are you learning Spanish for? Learn Mandarin, it's going to be the new most needed/wanted language, it will take you places!" This context is often debated and recently resurfaced in articles on Forbes, Freakonomics and World Hum. I still don't see the point.
Mandarin may be spoken by a larger number of people, but those people are mainly in China, Singapore and Hong Kong. When they travel or immigrate abroad, they need to learn the language of the place they're at -- people aren't going to try to learn Mandarin to communicate with them.
Approximately 400 million people speak Spanish, across the US, all of Latin America and a majority of Western Europe. So if I speak English and Spanish, I can communicate practically anywhere except perhaps Japan and the 3-4 Mandarin speaking countries. Even with skyrocketing rate of economic growth in China, and the increase of travel of Mandarin speaking people worldwide, I really don't see the whole, expansive world changing their main language of communication from English to Mandarin, do you?
Filed under: Arts and Culture, China
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joseph Luk Oct 20th 2007 3:52AM
I tend to be on the more cynical side when it comes to language dominance. My general belief about most things in life is that if there is money in it, people will do it. If you consider how today’s popular languages became dominant, you see the work of colonialism. While colonialism has come and gone, what remains is economic influence. Although you are correct in pointing out that nobody is going to simply go out and learn mandarin on their own accord, if they can gain a specific economic advantage by speaking a language, you can bet that they will. The most telling example I can think of is when I visited Versailles last summer. There was a Chinese tour group being led by a French tour guide who was fluent in Mandarin but not English. While this is a rare occurrence, it suggests two things: the Chinese have money and that money talks. Given the fact that China owns the majority of the bonds the the U.S. issues, as well as the immense amounts of foreign investment, we’re going to have to get used “Ni Hao” as well as “Hello”
Oddsocks Oct 20th 2007 8:25AM
I understand the point that the majority of Chinese speakers are geographically confined to one continent, but I'm not convinced about Spanish taking you across the world. In the Americas sure, but on the other continents I think you'd struggle.
What about Africa and the Indian subcontinent? The Middle East? And a majority of people in Western Europe can speak Spanish? I guess that depends where you draw the line between west and central/east?
MaryL Oct 21st 2007 8:37PM
Agreeing with #1, money does talk.
In my experience (I live in a country with a powerful Chinese business community), Chinese executives do learn to speak the local language. But if you want their business, they're more comfortable dealing with those who speak theirs.