will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

MiG-29

Banned Idiot
Who really cares if Chinese won't be as easy to learn. That's everyone elses problem that wants to do business with China. While at the same time the Chinese will be learning everyone elses' language and having the advantage. If people don't want to learn Chinese, that's their loss. You don't see the Chinese so arrogant that they expect everyone to learn their language as if it's the only thing that matters in the future. That's why China beats India. The software industry hasn't helped India beat China. It's not like they hold a monopoly of the global software industry and China has no software because Indians aren't there to write it for them. Guess what? Chinese are doing software for China and they're on the top ranks of computer programming. I don't really see the loss that Indians aren't writing software for the Chinese. That's actually a plus for China. That's something the US can only wish these days to have Americans writing software for Americans. The fact is China is way ahead of all the developing world competitors. That wouldn't be if English were so important as the activist say.

Please do not misunderstand me, what i am saying is Chinese will become more popular, true and more people will try to learn it, no one denies that, but you have to understand the reality, China and India are very well matched, have the same potential and India is growing fast, they won`t be left behind, but here is not about a competition, we are just saying that China is not the only emerging market, niether the only nation that will achieve more importance in 20 years from now.

of the 20 largest economies we found several large economies.

Russia and Brazil are growing too, these are economies that will control their respective areas, Brazil south america and Russia the former CIS countries, China is important we live in a multipolar world, this means Chinese only is important in the far east region, but english will remain important in Asia because the European languages are widely spread, in the american continent; spanish, english and portugues are the dominant languages and to a lesser extend French, in Africa, English, Arabic and French are too important.

In the middle east Arabic rules, so the peoples of these countries are not going to switch to Chinese to speak within themselves so people of europe, the americas, middle east or africa will still use english.

In the far east is different, chinese will rule no one denies it, but still english will remain very important because asians will need to do business with the non asian countries and then the english will be the most important language.


Now understand for western people alphabets are widely used and western people won`t change to ideograms, already alphabets are widely accepted so no one will switch to ideagrams, this is the real reason Japanese never became popular beyond manga lovers.
 
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Mightypeon

Junior Member
VIP Professional
Very nice. I heard of Chinese keyboards, but those were like regular qwerty layouts, just with the latin characters replaced. This sounds more like a fresh start.

And who says MS isn't still innovative? :D .

I say, fund it!


Actually, why isn't it being supported more?

That would be 8 to the power of three? 512?
Well, 512 characters are propably sufficient for most stuff, but I would not count on it.

I do believe in the superiority of phonetic writing systems though, If you know how a word sounds like, you can write it. If you wish to inquire about a written word you do not know, you can nevertheless say it.
Also, due to the amount of scientific works existing now, Replacing English by any other language will be much more difficult than the replacing of Latin (which did not went straight to English either), just because of the amazing amount of scientific literature in English.
 

kyanges

Junior Member
That would be 8 to the power of three? 512?
Well, 512 characters are propably sufficient for most stuff, but I would not count on it.

I'm not sure that's how it works. I think it was eight keys being able to write all characters. At least, that's how I understood it.
 

solarz

Brigadier
That would be 8 to the power of three? 512?
Well, 512 characters are propably sufficient for most stuff, but I would not count on it.

I do believe in the superiority of phonetic writing systems though, If you know how a word sounds like, you can write it. If you wish to inquire about a written word you do not know, you can nevertheless say it.

Why 8 to the power of 3?

Anyway, if you've ever texted in Chinese, you'll realize that it's so much faster than English. Why? Because of word associations. The Chinese language so much more tightly structured. You often need to type only the first two words of a phrase, and it will automatically be available for you to select.
 

delft

Brigadier
That would be 8 to the power of three? 512?
Well, 512 characters are propably sufficient for most stuff, but I would not count on it.

I do believe in the superiority of phonetic writing systems though, If you know how a word sounds like, you can write it. If you wish to inquire about a written word you do not know, you can nevertheless say it.
Also, due to the amount of scientific works existing now, Replacing English by any other language will be much more difficult than the replacing of Latin (which did not went straight to English either), just because of the amazing amount of scientific literature in English.
As I understand it you are supposed to be able to write Chinese. The key enable to indicate the stroke you would otherwise write. Having put in the first stroke limits the type of strokes that can follow and so for every following stroke. If I remember rightly a character needs on average 2.83 strokes to define it. But rarer characters will demand more stokes.
Knowing no Chinese I cannot investigate this myself, but it sounds as if with this input method Chinese will have a considerable advantage over the English alphabet method.
 

Mightypeon

Junior Member
VIP Professional
If I write with one iteration of 8 keys, I can write 8 words.
If I write with 2 iterations, there are 8 times 8 possilbilities,makes 8*8=64
With 3 iterations, one would have 8*8*8 possibilities, which is 512.
If one also features an extra "break" or "space" button, one gets 9*9*9= 729.

Unless stuff like "doubleclicks" is different, you wont get more than 729 symbols with that.
And this texting stuff also works ok in German too, although I commonly turn it off as I often switch between languages.
 

delft

Brigadier
As I understand it Chinese is written by putting strokes in a certain direction from a certain begin point. I imagine one of the keys delimits the character. There are then seven keys to put in the first stoke to begin writing a character. Having put in that stroke there are again a limited number of possible strokes. So keys are available to write only those strokes that make sense.
Your calculation is based on the notion that you are using a special type writer rather than that you make use of a special computer program that knows about how Chinese characters are written. You will be able to perhaps 50,000 characters. As many as the program knows about.
 

solarz

Brigadier
If I write with one iteration of 8 keys, I can write 8 words.
If I write with 2 iterations, there are 8 times 8 possilbilities,makes 8*8=64
With 3 iterations, one would have 8*8*8 possibilities, which is 512.
If one also features an extra "break" or "space" button, one gets 9*9*9= 729.

Unless stuff like "doubleclicks" is different, you wont get more than 729 symbols with that.
And this texting stuff also works ok in German too, although I commonly turn it off as I often switch between languages.

Sorry, but I don't get your logic. If I had to create a language with only ABCDEFG and Space, I can still create an infinite number of words.
 

delft

Brigadier
Sorry, but I don't get your logic. If I had to create a language with only ABCDEFG and Space, I can still create an infinite number of words.
The only difference is that the character takes less space.

I just looked at the Wikipedia article and didn't recognize one that correspond with what I remember. Perhaps my memory is at fault, maybe it's not yet described there.
 
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