Will Chinese become less popular language soon?

[Mr Rayon]

I heard that in today's society, Chinese (Mandarin) by far is the most frequently spoken language in the world. But I'm wondering whether it will stay like this for long because I've heard a few years ago that over there they now have somesort of one child policy rule. I am wondering whether anybody knows whether this is being properly regulated (i.e. the one child per family rule)? If it is, will this significantly reduce Chinese Mandarin influence globally? And what do you think will be the dominant language in the near future? I think Arabic and Spanish are good contenders. What do you think?

[CharonY]

The one-chiild policy is not a recent thing. It has been enacted since the late 70s to early 80s. In fact, there have been recent discussions to weaken or get rid of it.

[Blahah]

Mandarin will almost certainly be a dominant world language in the next 30 years or so. Spanish and Arabic are much less relevant in business and science, althought they are spoken widely in population. Japanese and German are much more important. If you're a scientist wanting to learn foreign languages to help your career, Mandarin, Japanese, German in that order (varying slightly with different sciences - Russian is important in physics/maths).

 

Mandarin is the de facto language of science and business in east asia already (not just China). The one child policy will have no effect. Firstly because it's already been in place for a long time and has showed no sign of preventing the spread of Mandarin. Secondly because it doesn't stop people having more than one child, it just imposes financial penalties on those who do. Thirdly because, as CharonY said, it may be lifted at some point in the future, which would remove any restriction it might be causing.

 

Plus, I really hope it doesn't become less important, as I've invested a lot of energy into learning it

[ewmon]

This all being my opinion...

 

China's one-child policy might wreck its society in more serious ways than to prevent their language from spreading globally. #1 - They're looking at a chronic shortage (many, many millions) of females/wives, and this will cause problems both at home and abroad. Older Chinese men will marry younger women out of their cohort, becoming like a national debt, and it will have a domino effect. #2 - Elderly Chinese had depended upon their children to support them in their old age, but now one child must do the work of multiple children to support both parents.

 

 

I'm not so sure about Mandarin (ie, "putonghua"), or Japanese or German becoming globally dominant. The Chinese language is difficult for most people to adopt, especially it being both a tonal and a non-alphabetic language. For at least one generation, the Chinese have worked hard to learn English because it is already universal. Japanese is also very difficult for foreigners to learn, and it's hardly an "international" language -- of its 130+ million speakers, all but 1 million of them live in Japan. The German language and German technology have been around long enough, and even though Germany is physically the center of Europe, it seems not to have spread far and wide there. Arabic doesn't look like a global contender. Spanish is international mostly in the sense that it's the lingua franca of South America. South America has only recently begun to be taken seriously for its scientific research and scholastics.

[Blahah]

I'm not so sure about Mandarin (ie, "putonghua"), or Japanese or German becoming globally dominant. The Chinese language is difficult for most people to adopt, especially it being both a tonal and a non-alphabetic language. For at least one generation, the Chinese have worked hard to learn English because it is already universal. Japanese is also very difficult for foreigners to learn, and it's hardly an "international" language -- of its 130+ million speakers, all but 1 million of them live in Japan. The German language and German technology have been around long enough, and even though Germany is physically the center of Europe, it seems not to have spread far and wide there. Arabic doesn't look like a global contender. Spanish is international mostly in the sense that it's the lingua franca of South America. South America has only recently begun to be taken seriously for its scientific research and scholastics.

I'm certainly not suggesting German or Japanese will become globally dominant, but they are already economically dominant. That's not about the absolute number of speakers, but about the resources handled in those languages. Japan is the world 3rd largest economy and has historically been a major scientific centre of Asia. Similarly, Germany is the major non-English scientific and business centre of Europe. Regardless of how many people speak them, they are valuable languages to learn.

 

If you mean Mandarin is difficult for English speaking people to adopt, well it's true that it's harder than learning French or German, but it's not particularly difficult. Tonality adds a small hurdle early in the language, but the exceedingly simple grammar makes it really much easier once you're past that hurdle. With reading and writing, the logographic system is unfamiliar to many westerners but it is not inherently more difficult to learn. Because of the meaning attached to symbols, beyond just the sounds they represent, learning vocabulary becomes disproportionately easier the more words you know. People seem to think Chinese will be hard before they try to learn it, but it's really not that hard. Consider that for Chinese people to learn English is just as difficult as for English people to learn Chinese. It simply will become more popular, and if you ever thought about learning it but decided not to because of the perceived difficulty, I strongly urge you to try it - it's not bad at all.

 

I agree about the knock on effects of the one child policy due to the favouring of male children, that's something we'll all be dealing with.

[Mr Skeptic]

Just because Chinese is spoken by over a billion people doesn't mean it is necessarily all that popular. Consider for example the comparative size of the British islands. And yet English is now spoken all over the place. Same with Spain and Spanish. China has been isolated, largely by choice, for quite a while. Perhaps as they become wealthier lots more people will want to learn Chinese to do business with them, or now that they are not quite as isolated as before. Until then, I'm sure it will remain a very popular language ... in China.

[lemur]

Would it ever be possible for the Chinese economy to integrate new language-learners as a means of facilitating multi-ethnic economic integration? I often wonder this when people are complaining that so many jobs have been moved to China. Could China simply allow migration/integration so that people globally could seek work and cultural enrichment by living and acculturating in Chinese cities? Or are these cities already abundantly globally multi-ethnic, and I'm just making naive assumptions about ethnic homogeneity?

[Blahah]

Would it ever be possible for the Chinese economy to integrate new language-learners as a means of facilitating multi-ethnic economic integration? I often wonder this when people are complaining that so many jobs have been moved to China. Could China simply allow migration/integration so that people globally could seek work and cultural enrichment by living and acculturating in Chinese cities? Or are these cities already abundantly globally multi-ethnic, and I'm just making naive assumptions about ethnic homogeneity?

Why wouldn't that be possible? It's fairly straighforward to move to China to work, although if you actually expect to have your western standard of living you'll have to get a much better job than you would have here (UK/USA). Quite a few of my cohort from school have moved to china permanently for management positions in finance.

 

I don't think many Chinese cities are abundantly multi-ethnic at the moment though, based only on what I've heard from people visiting.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Blahah

[lemur]

Why wouldn't that be possible? It's fairly straighforward to move to China to work, although if you actually expect to have your western standard of living you'll have to get a much better job than you would have here (UK/USA). Quite a few of my cohort from school have moved to china permanently for management positions in finance.

 

I don't think many Chinese cities are abundantly multi-ethnic at the moment though, based only on what I've heard from people visiting.

I was thinking more in terms of all the complaints you hear about manufacturing jobs all being "out-sourced" to China. Many people seem to be advocating "in-sourcing" of such industries and jobs, but my question is whether it would be more efficient to move the jobs to N America and/or Europe or to move people to the jobs. My concern would be that, as with most working class cultures, there is an ideology of job-scarcity among workers in China that would bloom into anti-migration sentiments with the belief that "THEY are taking OUR jobs." This is typically how workers end up in conflicts over ethnicity and other identity-issues, I think. Although, if Chinese economics somehow has a magical means of providing sufficient jobs and compensation to satisfy people's desire for manufacturing jobs, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to investigate normalizing labor-migration to Asia.