As far as I see it, English is the major language in: the UK, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Other countries who speak English as a second language include the Scandanavians, Holland and others. None of them involve Chinese, and if I were to learn an new learn -- It'd probably be Dutch.
The article takes a popular stance, though: "Its happening in America, that means the world, too".
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A multi-lingual population is already the case in much of the world and is becoming more common in the United States. Indeed, the Census Bureau reported last year that nearly one American in five speaks a language other than English at home, with Spanish leading, and Chinese growing fast.
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Spanish not being used in England (I've NEVER seen a Spaniard moved over here) and Chinese people often here just for university and such.
The next world language will be... Esperanto!!!
I have more hasty, ill thought out, sweeping statements too. Just like this fool. What dialect of Chinese? There`s like 10 or more of them...
meh doesn't bother me much. I plan on learning japanese. I'd like to learn german, french, italian and such. at least the basics so when I go on my ever s long planned trip to tour europe I can communicate decently.
These statistics don't take into account that only approximatly 200 million chinese live in the industrialized south east, the rest is pretty much completely unimportant.
It just doesn't matter if there are 1 billion farmers (and as sad as it is also what you could call modern 'work-slaves') somewhere in central China, because you will never get into any buisness (or other kind of) relation with them anyways.
Still those 200 million are a strong reason to learn Chinese
(the same is btw even more true for those indish languages)
We speak 3 languages at home...My wife and I speak English, I speak Dutch to our kids and my wife speaks French to them. It can get a bit messy at the dinner table since we don't have a family language. So far the kids aren't confused and pick it up very fast.
I must learn French though because my kids are starting to speak it better than I do
As long as there are numbers on the menu's I won't learn Chinese
i refuse to learn a language which doesn't use an alphabet like english. so, there goes anything other than spanish, portugese, italian and french and german. and i'm terrible at the last 2.
english is already the dominant world language. it's spoken as first language in the UK, Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, NZ, and large parts of the caribbean as well as a second language in about 1/3 of africa, the indian sub-continent and elsewhere. it's already become the dominant language of the net and is the language of air travel.
I found the article slightly hard to believe in that english will stop being the world's dominant language. None of the facts they showed really pointed toward that. If anything it just seems as though many people are becoming bilingual by learning English in addition to their native language. Wouldnt that contribute to English dominance? Its true that as China develops and greater numbers of Chinese spread across the world, their language could become a standard in many areas, but as of now the trend is still for Chinese to learn foreign languages rather than for us to learn Chinese. my rant stopped making sense a while ago so i'll stop here...
Majority of counteries across the world learn English as a second language. It's really more dominant because the English-Speaking world makes up the bulk of the worlds economy.
As such nations have to learn English to be able to compete in the world. Why? Because the English-Speaking nations are crap at (or rather most are unwilling) learning other languages.
I personally speak a nice wide selection, but I can only read/write a few. (even then it's not exactly that well)
Think is though even when I'm abroad most of the time when someone picks up I speak English they will also speak it. So you don't generally need to speak the native language unless you come across someone who doesn't understand English.
At the end of the day, I've had very little in the way of language barriers when visiting my cousin in Japan, or friends in Russia, etc. Most of the time I'm able to just speak English without worrying about my poor variations of thier native language.
As most of the world actually panders to our lazy nature, it's likely that English is going to continue to be the language of choice for some time.
I've also noticed that quite a number of other nations will learn English rather than another native language.
So it's used quite a bit as an intermediate language.
God knows why. It's a horribly inaccurate language, far too open to mis-understanding.
that's kinda the nature of language in general--approximation. english is a real mutt, to be sure, but every language has its strengths and weaknesses, nice bits and ugly bits. if there is any huge dominant shift in language, it's not like it's going to happen overnight. we'll have time to listen to the "how-to-learn" audio tapes
Replies
I'd always recommend learning a secord or third language.
The article takes a popular stance, though: "Its happening in America, that means the world, too".
[ QUOTE ]
A multi-lingual population is already the case in much of the world and is becoming more common in the United States. Indeed, the Census Bureau reported last year that nearly one American in five speaks a language other than English at home, with Spanish leading, and Chinese growing fast.
[/ QUOTE ]
Spanish not being used in England (I've NEVER seen a Spaniard moved over here) and Chinese people often here just for university and such.
I have more hasty, ill thought out, sweeping statements too. Just like this fool. What dialect of Chinese? There`s like 10 or more of them...
Mi espaniol es no bueno.
china isn't the world because there's billions living there in population count
It just doesn't matter if there are 1 billion farmers (and as sad as it is also what you could call modern 'work-slaves') somewhere in central China, because you will never get into any buisness (or other kind of) relation with them anyways.
Still those 200 million are a strong reason to learn Chinese
(the same is btw even more true for those indish languages)
...er, Cantonese. Whatever.
I must learn French though because my kids are starting to speak it better than I do
As long as there are numbers on the menu's I won't learn Chinese
*Pariah wasn't done by us, just helped wrap it up at the end, and do all the translations
english is already the dominant world language. it's spoken as first language in the UK, Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, NZ, and large parts of the caribbean as well as a second language in about 1/3 of africa, the indian sub-continent and elsewhere. it's already become the dominant language of the net and is the language of air travel.
-R
As such nations have to learn English to be able to compete in the world. Why? Because the English-Speaking nations are crap at (or rather most are unwilling) learning other languages.
I personally speak a nice wide selection, but I can only read/write a few. (even then it's not exactly that well)
Think is though even when I'm abroad most of the time when someone picks up I speak English they will also speak it. So you don't generally need to speak the native language unless you come across someone who doesn't understand English.
At the end of the day, I've had very little in the way of language barriers when visiting my cousin in Japan, or friends in Russia, etc. Most of the time I'm able to just speak English without worrying about my poor variations of thier native language.
As most of the world actually panders to our lazy nature, it's likely that English is going to continue to be the language of choice for some time.
I've also noticed that quite a number of other nations will learn English rather than another native language.
So it's used quite a bit as an intermediate language.
God knows why. It's a horribly inaccurate language, far too open to mis-understanding.
No it wont.
i can also swear in russian, spanish, german, a little in hebrew.
thats all that really matters
we'll have time to listen to the "how-to-learn" audio tapes
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We get to a word we don't know we would still talk very slowly and loudly in English. (heh like that EVER helps)
Id just learn another language to pick up hot Asain chicks
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I'd learn chinese or ANY language just for that!