Chinese to overtake English as the dominant language of the internet

[Starblazer]

Made even more possible by the flexibility of the alphabets at the elemental level.


Nowhere did I said categorically that the Hawaiian language cannot be adapted. But there are serious limitations on how far before there are so many adapations that the language itself become unrecognizable.

The Hawaiian language is not a 'phonotactical' language, meaning consonent clusters like 'ch' or 'rh' or 'th' or the more complex 'chr' simply do not exist and they do not exist because they ARE NOT PERMISSIBLE. That is the great difference between languages: Permissibility. And this limitation is learned very early into the classes. In this situation, an adaptation is not possible but will require a whole new word. Same limitation for ideogrammatic languages like Chinese and Japanese.

As far as economic incentive goes, you are treading into human behaviors. If something is inherently limited in so many ways, especially when we are talking about science and technology, people will gravitate towards the things that are inherently more flexible.

Small mind. English does not have some of the sounds in Slavic languages, there are sounds in Vietnamese so unique you'd think aliens were making them, so therefore because English does not have those sounds it can never be adaptable, your arguments run thin. People will simply replace the sounds they don't have with another unless they are running on a rat brain, but of course with more sounds come more possible combinations. Of the languages that exist today there are enough sounds already in each one of them to create combinations impossible to exhaust, the difference is the richness of vocabulary which come from the knowledge within the culture.

People gravitate towards what they perceive as necessary or useful to them. If Russia won the cold war we'd be speaking Russian, if Japan won WW2 your grandma would be speaking Japanese regardless of how difficult it is. There was a time in Europe where French was the most prominent language and German was the language of science, why did English overtake them? It was the language of commerce, if you wanted to do business you'd better learn it, it's simple human behavior, but i don't think robots understand.

 

[Developereo]

American superpower which sealed English as having the most relevance in the world

I believe that is the main reason. The two main colonial powers were England and Spain and their language dominated the globe. The French and Dutch were relatively small players.

The colonial era was superceded by the American era, and it is American dominance in culture, finance and science, which propelled English above Spanish as the lingua franca.

I don't agree in the inherent superiority or inferiority of alphabets v/s ideograms. The proper comparison would be with strokes v/s alphabet, or words v/s ideograms. As an example, German is notorious for stringing together existing words to convey new concepts, 'streetcar stop' is Straßenbahnhaltestelle. Yet nobody would argue that Germans lack the ability to innovate.

 

[mastaan]

There is definitely something wrong with the way these guys are calculating statistics... I look at it in two ways and in both the ways, Chinese can not be the dominant language

1. Local use: Compare Chinese population, which uses chinese for local internet, with that of the countries where common internet language is in English... India, US, UK, Canada, South East Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, singapore etc etc), Australia, Africa, Middle East... So, like chinese internet consumption is growing, so is the case with Indian, South East Asian and african consumption and i don't understand under which assumption can the numbers of internet users of one country can take over almost all of the developing world, while assuming stagnant numbers from developed world...

2. Internet Interactions: Internal conversation within China will be in Chines and so will be the case for English (along with some local languages) in the other countries listed in point 1. However, whenever a Chinese or Spainard or French person wants to communicate with someone from an english spekaing country, He or she will have to communicate in English.. e.g. all chinese participants in this forums have to write in english to be a part of the discussions... So, by that logic, the multiplying effect only works in favor of english that in addition to it's internal interaction numbers, English will be the prime language for interactions with people from countries where internet is not in English...

And if the above 2 assertions are correct, then Chineseis basically a huge local language (like Japanese or German or French), but that is it. On internet, it can not be able to lead english as to even communicate outside, the multiplier effect will go to english... and therefore, the hypothesis of this research sounds absolutely bogus and illogical!

 

[Starblazer]

There is definitely something wrong with the way these guys are calculating statistics... I look at it in two ways and in both the ways, Chinese can not be the dominant language

1. Local use: Compare Chinese population, which uses chinese for local internet, with that of the countries where common internet language is in English... India, US, UK, Canada, South East Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, singapore etc etc), Australia, Africa, Middle East... So, like chinese internet consumption is growing, so is the case with Indian, South East Asian and african consumption and i don't understand under which assumption can the numbers of internet users of one country can take over almost all of the developing world, while assuming stagnant numbers from developed world...

2. Internet Interactions: Internal conversation within China will be in Chines and so will be the case for English (along with some local languages) in the other countries listed in point 1. However, whenever a Chinese or Spainard or French person wants to communicate with someone from an english spekaing country, He or she will have to communicate in English.. e.g. all chinese participants in this forums have to write in english to be a part of the discussions... So, by that logic, the multiplying effect only works in favor of english that in addition to it's internal interaction numbers, English will be the prime language for interactions with people from countries where internet is not in English...

And if the above 2 assertions are correct, then Chineseis basically a huge local language (like Japanese or German or French), but that is it. On internet, it can not be able to lead english as to even communicate outside, the multiplier effect will go to english... and therefore, the hypothesis of this research sounds absolutely bogus and illogical!

This topic is premature. Chinese does have the potential to become a major commerce language in the future, along with even Hindi, depending of the economic and political structure of the future. There were many shifts in cultural spheres in history already and people are not going to say no to money even if a language is hard to learn, but it's all speculation right now and frankly premature.

 

[mastaan]

This topic is premature. Chinese does have the potential to become a major commerce language in the future, along with even Hindi, depending of the economic and political structure of the future. There were many shifts in cultural spheres in history already and people are not going to say no to money even if a language is hard to learn, but it's all speculation right now and frankly premature.

What you are referring to is the long term change and even there, it doesn't sound so convincing a possibility because english has been the first and only language of the Industrialized world and you can find more people learning english in india and China than west learning Mandarin or Hindi.. But it still is a theoretic possibilities and you have a fair point.

But the news by the OP claims that such a tectonic shift will happen in 5 years and I have a problem with that hypothesis... and, if that is not an absurd hypothesis, then I should be in line to be the next king of england...

 

[wealdcn017]

Small mind. English does not have some of the sounds in Slavic languages, there are sounds in Vietnamese so unique you'd think aliens were making them, so therefore because English does not have those sounds it can never be adaptable, your arguments run thin. People will simply replace the sounds they don't have with another unless they are running on a rat brain, but of course with more sounds come more possible combinations. Of the languages that exist today there are enough sounds already in each one of them to create combinations impossible to exhaust, the difference is the richness of vocabulary which come from the knowledge within the culture.

People gravitate towards what they perceive as necessary or useful to them. If Russia won the cold war we'd be speaking Russian, if Japan won WW2 your grandma would be speaking Japanese regardless of how difficult it is. There was a time in Europe where French was the most prominent language and German was the language of science, why did English overtake them? It was the language of commerce, if you wanted to do business you'd better learn it, it's simple human behavior, but i don't think robots understand.

correct, when british soiet and germany fire each other, the US sell weapon to all of them. finally, US find germany is stronger than british, so US resolve all of them via support british. if germany win the ww2, german is dominate language now.

 

[Starblazer]

What you are referring to is the long term change and even there, it doesn't sound so convincing a possibility because english has been the first and only language of the Industrialized world and you can find more people learning english in india and China than west learning Mandarin or Hindi.. But it still is a theoretic possibilities and you have a fair point.

But the news by the OP claims that such a tectonic shift will happen in 5 years and I have a problem with that hypothesis... and, if that is not an absurd hypothesis, then I should be in line to be the next king of england...

English wasn't the only language of the industrialized world, there was also French, Spanish, German and Russian running in contention, but English came out on top over time because the economic dominance of the British Empire. And so far the only truly "industrialized" countries in the world has only either been American or European, with Asia emerging and the west declining the power dynamics are heading for a change, changing the flow of capital comes with a change in influence. But I don't think English will disappear though, unless their politicians actually run their economies into the abyss. What I think is possible though is a dominate language arising in each economic zone, where if someone foreign wants to do business in that zone they have to be familiar with that language, we won't know until then. You can be the queen of England though....you know what you gotta do.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

What you are referring to is the long term change and even there, it doesn't sound so convincing a possibility because english has been the first and only language of the Industrialized world and you can find more people learning english in india and China than west learning Mandarin or Hindi.. But it still is a theoretic possibilities and you have a fair point.

But the news by the OP claims that such a tectonic shift will happen in 5 years and I have a problem with that hypothesis... and, if that is not an absurd hypothesis, then I should be in line to be the next king of england...

Chinese is much easier to learn than English if you are not tone deaf.

 

[wealdcn017]

english: basic 26 character, need to learn 3000 words at least to express, more than 10 kinds of grammer;
chinese:basic 5 character一丨丿丶乙），need to learn 2000 words to express, little grammer;
furthermore, every word is a project, sealed more information.
which is easy to learn?

 

[AADHAAR]

Yes, Roman alphabet is most prevalent in the world ... but the language of mathematics is not roman, chinese or greek.


0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

These 10 symbols (including ZERO i.e. 0) have influenced modern life much more than 26 alphabets of roman script.

Advances in Indian mathematics - the invention of the ZERO and positional number system, are some thing as profound as the invention of fire or wheel.

Nobody knows who exactly invented fire or wheel (untraced to any civilisation), but we all can be proud of our ancestors who gave the world the number system which changed the world.

Any doubts .... and the chinese are welcome to go back to counting rods, or romans to I, II, III, IV .....

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Any doubts .... and the chinese are welcome to go back to counting rods, or romans to I, II, III, IV .....

Well it's a good thing then, that the concept of zero was invented by the Babylonians.

And we don't necessarily use Arabic numerals, every language has their own method of counting.

 

[AADHAAR]

Well it's a good thing then, that the concept of zero was invented by the Babylonians.

And we don't necessarily use Hindu-Arabic numerals, every language has their own method of counting.

1. The invention was not Arabic ... they just ported it to Europe.

2. And Balylonians .... obviously, you're a gone case.

Enjoy counting rods.

 

[AADHAAR]

The Hindu–Arabic numeral system[1] or Hindu numeral system[2] is a positional decimal numeral system developed between the 1st and 5th centuries by Indian mathematicians, adopted by Persian (Al-Khwarizmi's circa 825 book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals) and Arab mathematicians (Al-Kindi's circa 830 volumes On the Use of the Indian Numerals), and spread to the western world by the High Middle Ages.

The system is based on ten (originally nine) different glyphs. The symbols (glyphs) used to represent the system are in principle independent of the system itself. The glyphs in actual use are descended from Indian Brahmi numerals, and have split into various typographical variants since the Middle Ages.


Hindu

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

^^^ Oh yeah, Wikipedia.

- Babylonians were the first to invent the concept of zero.
- Arabic numerals are important but not necessarily used, since all languages have their own numeral system.

Since the biggest Indian claim (that they invented zero) is false, what else do they have to show?

 

[AADHAAR]

^^^ LOL.

Chinese Lizard is feeling bad. It's showing.