Foreign students in China - some stats info

[anonymoose]

Among Indonesians there are many ethnic Chinese but far from all.

In Indonesia, of course this is true, but of those studying in China, I'd estimate that at least 90% are ethnic Chinese (and probably an even higher proportion than that). Of the Indonesian students I've met in China, and that must be dozens in total, as far as I know, ALL have been ethnic Chinese.

Are they all language students?

I think the majority are, but at Fudan University at least, there are many Korean students studying things other than language, and outnumber students of other nationalities by quite a large margin.

[doraemon]

Are you thinking about Western vs Eastern (Occidental vs Oriental), not European vs Asian? They are not the same.

Yeah, that's probably what I meant...

We use the same script, hence many words are borrowed from Russian, most place name are spelled the same way, even if they don't use all letters as in Russian and have a couple of extra letters, which are not used in Russian.

Serious! Whoa...so Mongolian basically = Cyrillic?

[skylee]

Re Mongolian. I have read somewhere (a long time ago) that because of the use of cyrillic the Mongolian people are now (generally) unable to use their own script, which is still used in Inner Mongolia in China. So if they want to learn their own script they would have to go to Inner Mongolia. Not sure how true this is. And sorry for the irrelevance.

[atitarev]

Yes, Mongolian in outer Mongolia (country) differs largely from that of Inner Mongolia, they are based on different dialects. Outer Mongolian is heavily influenced by Russian, Inner Mongolian by Chinese. Native Mongolian script doesn't have much support in computing, it can only be written vertically and it's not 100% phonetic, so it's not easy to learn and use. Cyrillic is too convenient, so Mongolians in the country of Mongolia still use Cyrillic, the same alphabet as in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc, although it's not Slavic (different language family). Note that Dungan (a Chinese dialects in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Russia) also uses Cyrillic.

[anonymoose]

Of the ethnic Mongolian people I've met in China (which admittedly is not many, but anyway...), none of them can even speak Mongolian, so I doubt that the traditional Mongolian script has much use in China either.

[Lu]

so Mongolian basically = Cyrillic?

Yes, just as English basically = Latin. :-/

Cyrillic is a script. Mongolian is a language. Mongolian can be written in Cyrillic. Although it can probably be written in other scripts as well.

Sorry for going off topic.

[doraemon]

Cyrillic is a script. Mongolian is a language. Mongolian can be written in Cyrillic. Although it can probably be written in other scripts as well.

You know what's funny, I've never looked at it that way before...

[chrix]

Have a look here for an explanation of what writings systems have been used to write Mongolian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_writing_systems

You can even use Chinese characters to write it:

[atitarev]

Although the Cyrillic script is somewhere at the bottom of the Wikipedia article, it's the only script used on the internet, web-forums, news, etc. e.g. Mongolian Wikipedia Mongolian Wikipedia or Mongolian News. Not sure if Inner Mongolians use internet in Mongolian in other scripts but those who know Cyrillic can read Internet in their language.

The alphabet differs from the Russian by 2 letters - Өө /ö/ and Үү /ü/ and some letters are only used in borrowed from or via Russian words.

[tooironic]

It's not unreasonable to me. Here in the US, if I encounter a Korean we usually end up speaking Chinese to each other instead of English.

Me too (in Australia)! It's quite funny actually, as I never really thought Chinese would come in handy as a kind of lingua franca.

[atitarev]

I know some Japanese in Australia who speak Chinese - not so many and some Chinese who speak Japanese. the combination - Korean speaking Japanese (very-very common) and Japanese speaking Korean are even more common. Many Koreans speak both Chinese and Japanese.

It seems, Koreans are good linguists, or status of a smaller country and less people learning Korean makes them more flexible - they travel to China and Japan a lot.

[tooironic]

As a generalisation I wouldn't say they were great linguists per se. I've met plenty Koreans whose language levels were not that great. I think it's just the fact of where they are situated in the world, coupled with learning opportunities. Much like many European countries.

[chrix]

Though with many European countries they're much aided by the fact that the languages are so closely related. True, Korean is structurally similar to Japanese and has borrowed a lot of Chinese words like Japanese, but I'd still say the linguistic distance between Korean and its neighbouring languages is much greater than your average European language. Well, you could throw in your standard stereotype about East Asian industriousness, I suppose, to offset that linguistic distance

[Meng Lelan]

Me too (in Australia)! It's quite funny actually, as I never really thought Chinese would come in handy as a kind of lingua franca.

Chinese should be the lingua franca, if it weren't for English.

[tooironic]

@Meng Why?

[Meng Lelan]

Why?

Because it would be fun.

[vampire]

but I'd still say the linguistic distance between Korean and its neighbouring languages is much greater than your average European language

it's easier for an european to learn another european language than for a korean to learn chinese or japanese doesnt make it become hard for a korean to learn chinese or japanese, it can still be easy

Cyrillic is a script. Mongolian is a language. Mongolian can be written in Cyrillic. Although it can probably be written in other scripts as well.

now the concept of the word language is much closer to that of its chinese equivalent

[doraemon]

it's easier for an european to learn another european language than for a korean to learn chinese or japanese doesnt make it become hard for a korean to learn chinese or japanese, it can still be easy

Ummm...OK...what?