You'll Need to Learn Chinese to Read the Internet

[f-14]

somebody needs to learn chinese for their new job if they fail to keep posting computer technology in their articles as enough of us are going to boycott reading them with out direct computer technology subjects!

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]g-thor[/nom]I see a sad trend here. several posters seem to think it is fine to require the rest of the world to adopt English, but God forbid that any other country should require an anglophone to learn another language.How many non-anglophones have you worked with? How much do you really know about the other countries of the world? Do you know what anglophone means? (Hint: it's an English word listed in any good dictionary.)I live in an officially bilingual country, English is my mothertongue and I am reasonably functional in our second language. I have a large group of friends who come from Africa, and most of them are, at the least, bilingual or trilingual. Some of them speak 5 languages. While their English isn't the same as mine, it is as good as many forum posters I read (not just Tom's). And I have met people who think they are stupid because their English isn't as good as an anglophone's. We North americans need to take the blinders off, drop the idea that we are superior to everyone else and then we can begin to learn. Yes, we have a magnificent level of living here, but we are not inherently superior to others. All living, breathing humanoid units must work daily at being better humans, and learning to understand others is a nice start./end Sermon[/citation]


I have no choice but to believe you are a liar.

I worked for years in a research laboratory where I was the ONLY person who's native tongue was english. Very few things made my co workers angrier than the problem of america's illegal immigration and the prospect of america becoming a bilingual nation(english+spanish). As they explained to me, english is every educated person's second language..EVERYONE IN THE WORLD! It is the one and only universal language. I tried to argue with them using russian, french, spanish, chinese, esperanto, and even arabic as other examples of competing universal languages. They laughed at me. Literally. They told me to get outside north america and travel the world and you wouldn't say such silly things. They were all in agreement and they were from all over the world...china, thailand, india, egypt, iraq, bahrain, somalia, venezuela, panama, and more. So I was convinced and remained convinced. English is it. In much of the non anglo world, english is the only language allowed at the college level.

The sad trend I see is people like you that do not understand the value of a ONE SINGLE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. In a perfect world, there would only be one language in existence. One language is more efficent and promotes equality. It appears to me the world has already decided english is it. It is only us stupid americans that havn't figured it out yet and think the dominance of english in the world is proof that americans are big mean bullies. That's just stupid. Americans did not make english the world's universal language. NON ANGLOS MADE ENGLISH THE WORLD'S UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. They chose it. And when a stupid arrogant american suggests to them they might also be required to learn spanish to get by in america, they go mad with rage. And I don't blame them.

 

[Guest]

It's not the most popular language. The number is great because of so many Chinese people who all speak Chinese. The rest of the world doesn't have much in common with the Chinese other than business. Concerning likes, interest, and culture they are complete opposites. I don't know one person who want's to listen to Chinese music, watch Chinese movies, or talk about Chinese life or read Chinese news except Chinese people. Chinese will never take the place of English because of the impossibility for non native speakers to learn characters. Chinese characters are too difficult and even native Chinese people can't remember how to write some characters on a daily basis so what hope would non Chinese have. Sorry, Chinese may pick up as far as speaking but never for written communication.

 

[sonofliberty08]

the universal language was body language ... 凸(- _ -)凸 say nah~ to the racist

 

[Startingline13]

All pilots need to speak English as well, as it is the universal flight language.

 

[winner4455]

This won't happen, they may co-exist together but there is no way Chinese will dominate. Unless they nuke every other country. Oh sh...

 

[AGPC]

Not happening. China blocks so many websites the people cant be the new ruelrs of the net.
I wish English was not being KILLED!! soon only some people will know how to really spell.
By the way if i mis-spelled it is becsaue i am horrble at typeing on a pc.

 

[Guest]

good news for my dad. now he don't need to learn english.

 

[bobliang345]

In China, kids take English starting from preschool as a course with the same priority as math or Chinese. Students in China spend hours each day memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules. The average college student probably has more knowledge of English than the average American. The hard part for them is speaking and listening as most of them are not as privileged as us to have teachers who actually speak the foreign language natively and must rely on their textbooks and recordings to learn English.
If you've ever been to China, you'll see how much work they put into school compared to kids here.

 

[bobliang345]

This article is also slightly misleading because it's implying that because more people are using Chinese on the Internet, YOU have to use Chinese on the Internet. That is obviously untrue. For example, Chrome is growing in popularity and is about to surpass Firefox, but that doesn't mean the long-time Firefox user must switch to Chrome because the majority of users are on Chrome.

English is the universal language of all educated people at the moment. If you're a professor in China wanting to share your ideas with someone else in your field in France, you have to communicate in English simply because it is universal. On the other hand, the average Chinese person wanting to access the Internet does not have to learn English. If Chinese actually surpasses English as the universal language in a few decades, it would be a thing for the new generations to take on, as the people today will be too old to easily learn a new language, unlike small kids. I can only speak and read Chinese, but not write it. However, that is not a problem because if I wanted to go work in a high-tech company in China or be a professor at a university, that is no problem. There were a few professors from Europe and the US at Fudan University when I visited, but my dad said their students were honored to be able to attend a class in English.

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]loomis86[/nom]If someone is born with the most universal of all universal languages(english), there's not much incentive to learn another language. If, for instance, you were born with navajo, flemish, or slovakian, you would feel a stronger urge to learn another language.[/citation]

actually to be more correct english is not the most universal language , while it is the most used trade wise , trade ussage and universallity are two different things. universal would be what langauge shares the most things in common with larger number of different langauges , going by that definition of universial , the most universal language would actually be latin, because nearly every european language was based off latin and the latin alphabet including english itself . for this reason (and the fact it is a dead language) latin became the language for science.

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]actually to be more correct english is not the most universal language , while it is the most used trade wise , trade ussage and universallity are two different things. universal would be what langauge shares the most things in common with larger number of different langauges , going by that definition of universial , the most universal language would actually be latin, because nearly every european language was based off latin and the latin alphabet including english itself . for this reason (and the fact it is a dead language) latin became the language for science.[/citation]

Well, if that's your definition, then I would nominate Esperanto, Yiddish, and Lojban as competitors to your nomination of Latin. However, a universal language that no one speaks is not much good for anything.

 

[rhelme]

What is the official language of scientific papers an research: English
What is the official language of Commerce: English
What is the official language of Aviation: English

There is a reason for this... The British greatly expanded their Empire and taught it to the Chinese, the Indian's and wasn't Australia a British Penal colony at one point... They spread there language and culture like no others have.

The Advantages are huge... You don't have to know 100 languages to fly and land in 100 different countries, being a scientist you can share research much easier as some of the advantages of English compared to nearly all other languages is the number of words that mean nearly the same thing but have minor differences... I think I read that there is no other language that can have so many meanings for one word and yet have so many different words that make it easier to describe objects. I believe English has the most synonyms than any other language's and that makes a difference...For instance... go to Google Translate and try Residence from English to spanish and there is no direct translation... it give you 5 choices.. so I reversed the second choice "estancia" from Spanish to English and found it can mean 15 different things... From home to room, to living room to many other words...

So to get the right definition out of estancia you have to write a sentence that uses it in the proper context... so make estancia mean living room... yet in english we say living room...

English from what many have told me is the hardest language to learn because of all of the adjectives and words that are spelled the same or sound alike and have different meanings.. There and their, no and know,

But one of the reasons it was chosen I said before was the Brits empire and the U.S's scientific work.... Aviation... did it first... major capitalistic market, computers (electronic, arguments can be made the Brits were first, but they speak... english).

English isn't going anywhere.... There are very few dialects of english... as I can fly to England and/or Australia and be understood and understand them well, all that differs is accent and we have that here in the States.. huge accent swings... but how many different dialects of Hindi exist. Many Indian friends say going from south to north India is like going to a new country because you can't understand their hindi, so they speak english.... I have heard the same about Chinese... whole different dialects... if you can't get your country to understand itself from one side to the other, how to expect to make your language the language of the Net...

Yet I can fly to any English speaking country and find there is really only one dialect of English.

 

[aleh1811]

I've been learning the language for quite a while and even thought it's considerably more difficult to learn than english (at least if your main language is spanish as its my case) i don't know if an eastern asian would share that view. Specially since many already use a similar writting system as what the chinese use.

As of people gloating about their main language being the "universal language", it really depends on what country is the economical superpower at the time. Most people would learn the language that benefits them economically the most. If tomorrow that language happens to be China, then it'd be chinese. My country already trades more with China than it does with any other english speaking country, and the benefits of knowing their language are increasing fast.

I personally don't care though which language ends up remaining as the most used. I personally like studying languages so i won't affect me much personally. Though I'm sure most people would defend neither of the previously mentioned ones, and if asked choose their native.

 

[TwoDigital]

Again, many seem to be assuming that people in China are using the Internet in Cantonese or Mandarin. That is not the case... There is no language "winner"... English is still the dominant Internet language and recent routing changes have given other languages a new edge, but long-term the jury is still out. This is coming from a non-english speaker so no flaming based on "English rules, you need to die" please...

 

[CKKwan]

To all,

I am a native speaker in Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and I speak 4 languages.

Reading through all the comments, I wish to highlight some interesting facts about Chinese. Wishes everyone have a happy new year and nice weekends.

1. http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary
Chinese earliest dictionary 800BC

2. While there are many dialects in Chinese, Chinese in general can easily read articles 2 thousand years ago. The Chinese writing system had been unified since the Qin Dynasty.

3. Student who learn Chinese never have to learn grammar, because it has very little grammar.

4. There are more than 30K Unicode code points consumed by CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnam) characters, but one only need to learn approximately 900 characters to be able to read daily newspaper. And believe me, one cannot read an English newspaper by knowing only the 26 characters.

5. Unlike other languages, studies show that, it is easier for non-native speaker to learn how to speak before they learn how to read/write in Chinese.

6. Chinese vocabulary in general is easier to understood and remember. Example: Train (火車), Car (汽車), Carriage (馬車), Oxcart (牛車), Bicycle (腳車) …

7. While there are spelling and grammatical mistakes in English, there is 錯別字 in Chinese. Means sometimes you wrongly written a character (missed a stroke) or written another character with different meaning but same pronunciation. Just like English, the reader will be smart enough to figure that out most of the time.

 

[eddieroolz]

But the language of intellectuals and computer software will still be English anyway. So I'll stick to my dual English/Japanese for now, thanks.