New "must learn" language

[NQBlues]

What do you think about this article?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/02/27/future.language.ap/index.html

[markalexander100]

Looks like rubbish to me. Who cares what Wo Meiqian in Guangxi thinks? Rich people speak English, so everyone else wants to learn it to get their money off them.

[trooper]

Of course more people will want to learn Chinese as China becomes richer. Many will become interested in China and begin learning the language but I forsee the vast majority of people giving up before reaching a good standard once they find Chinese is difficult to master. I think something similar has happened to Japanese. A lot of people in the west have been attracted to Japan because of its wealth or its modern, pop culture and have had a go at the language but few people have really learnt it well because of its difficulty.

So I doubt many people will have the patience to make Chinese their second language. I think people outside China will rely on Chinese people learning to speak English in the end.

[Lu Yi Si]

It's already happened! Look at Amazon and you'll see a whole array of usually fairly poorly written books, cassettes, DVD's, CD Roms etc, to study basic Chinese. Look again, when you have completed the book and know the basics, and want to study Intermediate or Advanced Chinese, you'll see that there are only a few books, that you must pre-order. As with every language without the need to speak it, you often lose motivation to learn it. I'm in China, so I speak Chinese daily. If I were in England, I too would have given up at beginner level. I congratulate anyone that can learn Chinese without being in a Chinese speaking country. Chinese will never really become as popular as English because it's speakers are contained in a small area. I often wish I could learn an easier language like Spanish, but living in China it would be of little use to me.

[Guest Wuliao]

From literary nerds to techno nerds. hurrah

[Jive Turkey]

There's a similar discussion about this on Forumosa:

http://forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?t=15273

[adambsmurf]

I thought the most important thing about that article is that it said that monolingualism is out and bilingualism is in -- and that was the thing for the future, not that Chinese was the next huge language.

It was another case of the CNN folks emphasizing the wrong meme.

[smithsgj]

什麼秘密?

[Quest]

咪咪 as in cat

[Lu]

I thought the most important thing about that article is that it said that monolingualism is out and bilingualism is in -- and that was the thing for the future' date=' not that Chinese was the next huge language.

It was another case of the CNN folks emphasizing the wrong meme.[/quote']Monoligualism is out and bilingualism is in? Is that news then? Learning more than one language has been necessary for ages for most people if they wanted to look beyond the borders of their own country. Or is the news that now the native speakers of English have discovered that not all the world speaks English?

[smithsgj]

> Learning more than one language has been necessary for ages for most people

Yeah but not for Anglophones, and the article was in an English language publication.

I'd say that since French lost its "international" status it has pretty much NOT been necessary for monolingual Anglophones to learn other languages. I don't mean that to sound arrogant, and there are plenty (like most Anglophones here) who do know other languages.

That has long been the case. Now, though, the situation may be changing.