[Singapore Lianhe Zaobao]It's very soon for Chinese to be popular Language all world

so, what will be the official spoken chinese language? putonghua? but why not cantonese or shanghainese or shandongnese or fujianese..........?

 

Worked hard to learn how to read back when I was in secondary school, out of practice, so can't recognise most of the characters anymore.

I have an opinion on the topic though - spurred by a coursemate in university who made a (loud) comment that "Chinese will become a world language in the future!".

I think it's a tad bit of either arrogance or over-optimism to assume that Chinese* will become a global language just because China is the most populous nation on the world. I don't quite see how it will displace English or Spanish or French as the preferred lingua franca. The spread of these three languages has its roots in the colonialisation of the world during the exploration and expansion era of the past. The British Empire owned almost half the world during the height of her powers, many of them important points of power - Hong Kong, India, Gibraltar, Israel-Palestine to name a few.

China, however, is the world's biggest single market (we'll come to that in a bit) - no doubt about that. Imagine selling something for the profit of just 20 cents to 'just' 100 million people there, you'll get some 20 million dollars worth of profit. It's not difficult to see why the world wants to do business there.

Still, it isn't this Japanese, American or German company whom are dealing with the people themselves - it's their local representatives, local offices whom would be the one communicating with the market. They would mostly be employed locally with some foreign experts whom would be overseeing the operations - these experts would be the one needing the command in the local language. And how many would there be? I would imagine a lot, but that isn't going to make the language global. Why would the normal 10 (example) million professionals in America and Britain would need to have a command in Chinese for? And even so, would they speak to one another in Chinese?

You won't find a Spaniard and a Taiwanese on the Internet chatting in Chinese.

It just isn't practical.

I speak English with my superiors and colleagues, have our company documents done in English, have meetings in English, even when just about all I deal with are Chinese. Even if you look forward to the future some 100 years from now, I doubt we'd be doing our bookkeeping and official correspondence with our New Zealand business partners in Chinese?

Our coffee break or lunch talks are mostly in the Chinese however - Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien etc.

People probably mistaken largest market as largest economy as both are rather different in context - the largest market need not necessarily be the largest economy and vice versa eg Japan is the world's second largest economy but its local market is quite small compared to their global customers.

The largest economy, in the making however, is the European Union. It is already by a single unit the biggest by GDP and will overtake the United States in the near future as the wrinkles are ironed out. With superior technology and economy clout,they will emerge as the biggest competitor to the United States as an emerging superpower.

Will be looking for some statistics to back up or disprove what I've said above.

Sorry to veer out into the EU.

Back to globally popular language - is normally determined by the most internationally practically lingua franca. I won't be surprised if Chinese becomes a worldwide popular language, but it would far from being the most important. Everybody wants to learn Japanese, but it is by far the most impractical unless you're dealing with people from the land of the rising sun.

* Furthermore, the argument about the Chinese being everywhere; go to the Chinatowns around the Western world or even Hong Kong and the language you're most likely to hear is the dialect of Cantonese! I don't see how Mandarin will become a global language unless we can understand one another first - walk around KL or Penang and try speaking Mandarin to the people on the street, you'd be surprised that many can't reply or even understand. To add to that most oversea Chinese no longer find it practical to study and speak that language because it's used only at home or not at all when everybody around you is speaking English or French or whatever the local language.

Just my two cents worth and I would like to hear some feedback on this.

Positive arguments are good for the development of the mind.

And red stratocaster's joke has a point - what or which Chinese? Dialect is not something you are taught in schools.

 

Many years ago, Singapore has adopted Madarin or putonghua as it is known in China and Hong Kong, as the official Chinese language in schools, in government and in business.

There are a number of major Chinese dialect groups here, like Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hailam, Hakka, Hockchiew, Foochiew, etc. This has caused a lot of confusion in the spoken word and the government decided that only one version, Mandarin, should be used in all schools learing that language. There is no problem with the written word as all dialect groups have the same written form. Needless to say, this policy has caused a great deal of resentment and unhappiness, but a neutral Mandarin is the best solution as it doesn't represent any one major dialect group.

Radio broadcasts and TV shows were hit as no dialect is permitted and only Mandarin is allowed. The famous Cantonese storyteller, Lee Dai Sor, suddently found himself out of work and so did the storytellers in other dialects. The very popular Hong Kong produced Cantonese movies were banned and people can only watch in privacy in their home the tapes/discs they rented or bought from the shops.

During the early years of Singapore's independence when English was in great commercial demand, many turned to study in English-medium schools and Mandarin gradually lost its importance and popularity even among the Chinese families. Nanyang University, which was meant to cater to students from all over Southeast Asia, was also affected as standards began to fall and enrolment dwindled. At one stage, NU even had to merge with the University of Singapore (English medium) in order to survive.

With the emergence of China as a place to do business with, the learning of Mandarin has taken on new meaning and urgency. But learning this language has often been difficult to most students from English- and dialect-speaking backgrounds, so the schools have been trying for a very long time to make the studying of Mandarin easlier by shortening the syllabus and reducing the number of words to be learnt by certain stages. Newspapers are also requested to use simplier words.

It is still an on-going process to make Mandarin fun and easy to learn in Singapore. But it will be very hard, and I think impossible, for Mandarin to supercede English in Singapore, much less in the world.

 

hehe....i was just joking!
i believe most of the chinese speak putunghua. even though they are from different provinces. as for the difference. most likely the only thing we can find would be the accent. just like deng xiaoping. his putunghua was full of si chuan accent.
meanwhile, as far as i know. the united nations is recently proposing to use simplify chinese as the "official written chinese". in terms of chinese population. no doubt, peoples in mainland china write simplify chinese mainly. but from my eyes. it isn't quite appropriate.
my point is really simple. all simplify chinese characters are base on "traditional chinese. so, without "traditional" there won't be "simplify". that's why we should keep the original!