Is Mandarin really the language of the future?

[NameName]

I often hear a lot of "Chinese is the language of the future" comments from people who think they are really intelligent.

 

I was thinking it over and I do not believe this to be true.

 

1. Chinese is very difficult to learn in comparison to English and Spanish and other Languages.

2 China is teaching many of their students Mandarin/English/Spanish while most schools around the world are not learning Mandarin

3. People often believe Chinese is the language of the future simply because the Chinese have a huge population. However, their population is all in one area while English and other mainly European languages spread all over the world.

 

So your thoughts? Will a Chinese language like Mandarin and Cantonese be the language of the future?

[luxfelix]

Maybe the predominant languages of the world have more to do with economics (trade language) and cultural/political power (lingua franca)?

 

If someone claims Mandarin to be the language of the future, it may have to do with their view of China as an economic or political power.

[J-William]

I think you're right. 

 

China is big and the economy is growing, the economy may even become the biggest in the world. But their international trade is conducted in English and that isn't changing any time soon.

 

The english requirement on the national exam has been eliminated recently, so the government is de-emphasizing learning english.

[J. D. Stembal]

My father shares this nebulous attitude toward Mandarin Chinese. His specific reasoning for it is a feeling that the Chinese are the greatest threat economically and militarily so it would behoove the average U.S. citizen to learn it when they are young, This line of thinking is flawed unless you are imaging your kids being locked up in a Chinese-run interment camp at some point in the future.

 

It was previously mentioned that Mandarin may become dominant in international business, but it is doubtful. Many of the more successful entrepreneurs in China are moving over to the United States and Canada and raising their children as bilingual. Depending on where you live, many Chinese immigrants that you meet actually speak Cantonese, not Mandarin.

 

The greatest demand for Mandarin linguists comes from the U.S. military where it is even higher than Arabic-speaking linguists.

[Bipedal Primate]

中国是不是很难学，我学得很快。

Zhōngguó shì bùshì hěn nán xué, wǒ xué dé hěn kuài.

 

I think Mandarin is the language of the present and future, especially for anyone interested in manufacturing mass product cheaply and/or in need of massive amounts of cheap labor. China has the physical space to mass produce many products, limited environmental laws, and practically "Limitless" cheap labor due to overpopulation and poverty. Therefore, Mandarin would be an advantage for manufacturing mass products.

 

Mandarin Chinese tops the list of most popular world languages, with nearly two billion speakers. English trails in third place, with 335 million speakers.

note: Cantonese is not even in the top tenLanguages

 

This data includes all speakers of the languages, not only native speakers. Language Approx. number of speakers 

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,917,000,000 

2. Spanish 406,000,000 

3. English 335,000,000 

4. Hindi 1260,000,000 

5. Arabic 223,000,000 

6. Portuguese 202,000,000 

7. Bengali 193,000,000 

8. Russian 162,000,000 

9. Japanese 122,000,000

10. Javanese 84,300,000

 

Source: Ethnologue, 17th Edition. 1. Encompasses multiple dialects.

Read more: Most Popular Languages in the World by Number of Speakers | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0775272.html#ixzz3AN3csWnn

 

Percentage of humans who speak the top 4 languages and where they are spoken:

 

1. Mandarin 官話 14.4%

China, Taiwan, Singapore

 

2. Spanish Español 6.15%

Spain, Mexico, United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara Partially mutually intelligible with Portuguese

 

3. English 5.43%

[united States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Commonwealth of Nations

 

4. Hindi हिन्दी 4.70%

India, Nepal

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

[shirgall]

Here's similar data for the United States, for the curious.

 

http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

 

For those 5 and over, from the 2011 Census survey: 291,524,091

Only spoke English: 230,947,071

Spoke any other language: 60,577,020

Spanish: 37,579,787 (62%)

Chinese (no breakdown for Mandarin versus Cantonese, etc.): 2,882,497 (5%)

Trailing behind this are French, German, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.

 

Even in the US, Chinese is #2. I started trying to learn Mandarin after doing considerable business with companies in Taiwan and China in the past five years. My school learning of languages was Spanish and Latin, which really did not help me with this.

 

The local public and private schools only offer Spanish at this point. They used to offer French and German but interest diminished. There is one local private school that has an extensive Latin curriculum that starts in Middle School. They are definitely an outlier.

 

For Canada, obviously English and French dominate, but French knowledge is only greater than 25% of the population in Quebec and New Brunswick, and it falls off quickly after that. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-314-x/98-314-x2011001-eng.cfm

 

At least in Canada people stopped reporting "Chinese" and started specifically saying "Mandarin" or "Chinese" on surveys. 

 

Mandarin ends up in the middle of the mix, often behind Cantonese (but there's also a non-specific Chinese given a lot but one would expect similar proportions in that category) in the major metropolitan areas. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-314-x/2011001/tbl/tbl1-eng.cfm

[J. D. Stembal]

Mandarin is the language of the present and future, especially for anyone interested in manufacturing mass product cheaply and/or in need of massive amounts of cheap labor. China has the physical space to mass produce many products, limited environmental laws, and practically "Limitless" cheap labor due to overpopulation and poverty. Therefore, Mandarin would be an advantage for manufacturing mass products.

 

Thank you for all this wonderful data, Primate - and Shirgall!

 

I do want to pose a question, though. Do you think mainland China would have developed as the primary region for the manufacturing of electronic goods in a purely free market society? If you think it will continue to attract much of the manufacturing contracts, please explain why you think that is. How do you explain the migration of production of many Japanese and Chinese branded goods to Thailand and Malaysia? 

 

I do understand that the Chinese have a long history of involvement in international trade mainly due to British and Dutch colonialism. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this topic, so it is not totally alien to me. However, I will not assume that the region will continue to be the main manufacturing hub for electronics in the world. Textiles and footwear have since moved elsewhere - Pakistan, India, Thailand, South America. Will China and Taiwan continue to dominate the manufacturing contracts for mass production of goods, specifically electronics?

[shirgall]

Do you think mainland China would have developed as the primary region for the manufacturing of electronic goods in a purely free market society?

 

if not for significant competition from Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia I'm sure they would have been more heavy-handed in their management of trade and industry, but they were smart enough to realize they needed to grease the skids.

 

Not perfect by any means, there's plenty of bullying and subsidies going around, but it was even worse in some countries (look up Japan and MITI sometime, and the dumping controversies on memory and microprocessors).

 

Automation can and will move manufacturing elsewhere, but so long as the US taxes on businesses are the highest in the world, it won't be coming to America.

[DCLugi]

The old sci fi series Firefly predicted that it would be:)

[J. D. Stembal]

The old sci fi series Firefly predicted that it would be:)

 

Not to stray too far from the topic, but there have been several criticisms leveled as Joss Whedon for his use of Mandarin in his show. If we suspend belief long enough to accept that all the main characters are fluent in Chinese (all the actors cast have a horrible phonetic capacity for Mandarin), why are there no Chinese actors in the show? http://www.racebending.com/v4/featured/frustrations-asian-american-whedonite/

 

To improve the realism, none of the characters would have such a casual knowledge of Mandarin Chinese without close contact with Chinese speaking individuals. From memory, I recall one or two Asian actors appearing on the show and they had bit parts.

 

I enjoyed watching the show, but they lacked a decent Chinese speaking script co-writer and dialogue coach to integrate Whedon's ideas of a future cross-cultural Chinese-English universe, and the usage of Mandarin dialogue in the show falls flat for me.

[surfingthoughts]

Must say I am surprised by some of the stats quoted above opened my eyes a bit to the prospect however I am yet to be convinced English will not be the predominant language, here are some stats that may change some people minds.

 

English is the language of the internet there is an interesting chart on wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_Internet (but as its wiki take with a pinch of salt). Please think of keyboards I have a Chinese friend he says that most people back home use qwerty keyboards...

 

English is the language of science with 80% of scientific journals being written in English - http://www.researchtrends.com/issue-31-november-2012/the-language-of-future-scientific-communication/

 

This link is also of interest regarding the language of business - http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/10/26/english-the-language-of-global-business/

 

Yes Madarin is important for manufacturing at the moment but how long will we need to rely on people/work forces for manufacturing rather than robotics. (Please be aware China's government artificially manipulates exchange rates in favor of exports which would not be possible in a true free market). 

[cynicist]

I really don't think it's a large benefit. There is no doubt that it is important to be able to communicate with those that know Chinese due to their status as a growing economic power, but don't forget the opportunity cost you are taking when learning the language. It is harder to pick up than European languages due to things like the importance of tone, so it may be more effective to pay for translation instead so you can focus on providing economic benefit in ways you might be better at or more interested in. (and don't forget that language translation software is always improving and making it less important every year)

 

I don't think anyone would take issue with the argument that learning written and spoken Chinese takes a significant amount of time and dedication (for a native English speaker) and that the skill requires consistent use to retain proficiency. Unless you are planning to live in China or interact in Chinese on a daily basis it's not a good use of your time.

[ziviler Ungehorsam]

 

1. Chinese is very difficult to learn in comparison to English and Spanish and other Languages.

2 China is teaching many of their students Mandarin/English/Spanish while most schools around the world are not learning Mandarin

3. People often believe Chinese is the language of the future simply because the Chinese have a huge population. However, their population is all in one area while English and other mainly European languages spread all over the world.

 

So your thoughts? Will a Chinese language like Mandarin and Cantonese be the language of the future.

 

1. There are no "difficult" or "easy" to learn languages! For Cantonese speakers Mandarin is very easy to learn! So is English for Germans. The question is how far away is the foreign language from your mother tongue.

2. Lots of schools in Asia teach Mandarin.

3. Lots of Chinese live all over Asia and US and even some in Europe.

 

However if Mandarin will be the language of the future probably depends on many other factors. 1914 the whole world spoke French, now 100 years later it is English. Possible that in 100 years the whole world speaks Mandarin. For millenniums China was the center of the world.

[ziviler Ungehorsam]

. I started trying to learn Mandarin after doing considerable business with companies in Taiwan and China in the past five years. My school learning of languages was Spanish and Latin, which really did not help me with this.

 

 

 

 

I also had Latin and French in school and was very unscessful. So I taught Mandarin basically by myself which was way more sucessfull. I am fluent in Mandarin or better 台灣國話 (Taiwan Guoyu) can talk business and read and wirte traditional Chinese.

[Seneca]

Yeah interesting.  I mean know one who knows anything about the topic would include Cantonese in the topic since for a long time the PRC have deliberately marginalised that and a number of other dialects/languages so the idea that Cantonese would take over is as relevant as saying any other dying language could take over.

Mandarin on the other hand, as a speaker of it, is one of the easiest languages to learn.  People assume that it is hard because of its steep learning curve, however Japanese or Thai (which I also speak) are far harder.  Further more Mandarin is fast developing into a Kanji free language, something Thai and Japanese won't do due to the presence of sanskrit based language or katakana, hirigana and kanji.