will chinese replace as the world`s international language?

kyanges said:

So just eliminate the complex characters, Chinese would catch on even more.

I can see it happening. One reason for abandoning them might be the computers themselves. Sooner or later, people might ask themselves, why write in english characters for the pinyin, then use that to get the right Chinese characters? They might just stop at the pinyin...

Can't wait for universal translators, Star Trek style, for Earth's languages. No language would be in danger of extinction then. .

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I read that an employee of Microsoft in Australia developed a system to type Chinese characters with a keyboard with eight keys, needing on average less than three key stokes per character. On average an English word needs about five key strokes so the user of Chinese would have a considerable advantage. You would not need to learn pinyin either.

People are natural language learners, especially when young, so difficulty is not an issue. The main reason why anybody would want to learn a non-native language is for economic reasons. As mentioned, Latin was promoted by the European scientific community as an universal language, but that never happened, because there is no economic value. The only reason why English is so popular because of the British and American empires. Similarly, if China can become as powerful as the USA, then I don't see why Chinese language cannot be adopted more globally than it is now.

delft said:

I read that an employee of Microsoft in Australia developed a system to type Chinese characters with a keyboard with eight keys, needing on average less than three key stokes per character. On average an English word needs about five key strokes so the user of Chinese would have a considerable advantage. You would not need to learn pinyin either.

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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? .

I say, fund it!


Actually, why isn't it being supported more?

solarz said:

Okay stop right there. Don't try to extend what you know of Japanese onto Chinese. There is only one writing system in Chinese (well, 2 if you count traditional characters), and writing pinyin in any document will just make you look like a kindergarten kid.

And just because you can spell a word phonetically in English, doesn't mean you understand what it means. Which, in the end, amounts to the same thing: you still don't know what that word means.

Yes, writing in Chinese is difficult if you don't do it on a regular basis. I myself have a lot of difficulty writing in Chinese, even though I speak it fluently. However, that's really not an issue when it comes to day-to-day communication. Chinese is easy to type, you don't need to remember how to write the characters, just how to read them. I can't think of any day-to-day communication that requires handwriting these days.

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Even with computers writing Japanese or Chinese is very difficult, is not easy any keyboard in Japanese and Chinese uses phonetic writing, that later is transformed into chinese characters by a selection of different chinese characters, a chinese native speaker knows perfectly how it sounds and has been previously taught the chinese characters, as such, it is impossible for a learner of Chinese to write Chinese without the previous knowledge of chinese characters even using a computer keyboard.

Ryz05 said:

People are natural language learners, especially when young, so difficulty is not an issue. The main reason why anybody would want to learn a non-native language is for economic reasons. As mentioned, Latin was promoted by the European scientific community as an universal language, but that never happened, because there is no economic value. The only reason why English is so popular because of the British and American empires. Similarly, if China can become as powerful as the USA, then I don't see why Chinese language cannot be adopted more globally than it is now.

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In my opinion Chinese will become more popular, but not to the extend of replacing English, and English will remain dominant due to its simplicity and wide spread use

bluewater2012 said:

Whether one language will replace another as the international language, depends on how many countries actually use it and how that particular language country affect your own. For example, if Asia began switching to Chinese as international and Africa slowing picking up where most of the world began to use it, I don't see why it can't as long as that language benefit you, you follow, that's the trend in todays world.

I also disagree that Chinese are hard to write than say any other language, (okay maybe a bit hard but doable). Look at it this way, imagine the English alphabets are all strokes and slashes as in Chinese characters -there's little differences between the two writing system if you put it in that form. For example, the word "big in Chinese, you only need 3 slashes. If you wrote it in English as big, that's three alphabets, but if you put it in strokes/slashes form, it will be 6 strokes/or slashes using my own way (Each letter will contain two slashes or strokes).

So in the end not much difference unless countries don't want to switch cause they're too used to alphabets system, but the ultimate deciding factor is how many countries use it and the benefits it brings long. For now, I don't think Chinese will replace English, as least not now, but in the far future, I think there a big possibility if things goes along as the way they are today.

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Chinese will not replace english even in the Future, China today has not an economic power to replace the west, in the future it won`t replace the west either, the Asian century is a Western creation, to promote Asia as a destination for Western investment.

Technologically speaking China is not a dominat power, and it won`t be the only technological o military power, India has basicly ,most of the technologies China has and they speak English, South American Brazil has most of the Technologies China has a at least a 1/3 of the labour China has through Mercosur, the USA won`t remain an isolated power, the USA will merge with Canada and Mexico at least economically and will have at least 500 million people market in 2020.

So the world by 2030 will be a world of economic blocks, Mercosur, NAFTA, the EU and another blocks like the CIS lead by Russia, of these blocks 4 use european based languages and won`t use Chinese among themselves for trade as English is used today.

By military conquest Chinese can not expand, NATO and Russia are in the best case for China as powerful militarily speaking as the chinese are, So chinese contrary to the Europeans languages that expanded from the 15th century to the 20th by the military power of the West has not that option available, Chinese only has the same path Japanese had, as a vehicle of international trade, as such Chinese won`t expand beyond the Chinese populations in the diaspora that live in malasya, Australia or Canada.
So Chinese can be a regional language used mostly in Asia in the far eastern region but not a language that will be used as the international language as English has been since the 1800s

Technologically speaking China is not a dominat power, and it won`t be the only technological o military power, India has basicly ,most of the technologies China has and they speak English, South American Brazil has most of the Technologies China has a at least a 1/3 of the labour China has through Mercosur, the USA won`t remain an isolated power, the USA will merge with Canada and Mexico at least economically and will have at least 500 million people market in 2020.

So the world by 2030 will be a world of economic blocks, Mercosur, NAFTA, the EU and another blocks like the CIS lead by Russia, of these blocks 4 use european based languages and won`t use Chinese among themselves for trade as English is used today.

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Really?? How did you come up with these predictions? What are they based on?

bd popeye said:

Really?? How did you come up with these predictions? What are they based on?

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They are not predictions now, basicly NAFTA for example is a free trade agreement, it means that the trade within the NAFTA partners will increase their trade by paying very low taxes, this was made in order to increase the potential markets of each nation.

Mercosur has a similar arrangement, Brazil can flood its South american neighbours with goods made in Brazil.


While is unlikely at least Now there will be a political union in North America in the near future is not unlikely they might have a common currency in 15-25 years from now; and the same applies to Mercosur and UNASUR


these two trade agreements are designed to assure a basic market to the members states, these agreements also ease the investment processes.

Now if you tell me what technologies China has that India has not, i will say very few, India is able to develop computers, cars, satellites, jet engines, tractors, heavy equiment, CNC tool machinery and only is a bit behind in manned space exploration but slightly ahead in software development.

Brazil is the same, Brazil is capable of developing computers, cars, airplanes, rockets, tractors, heavy equiment, CNC tool machinery and only is behind in space exploration.

So by Brazil having Mercosur and UNASUR they have assured a common market with Argentina and other south american nations.

India has already a population as big as china and a rate of growth as fast as China, then India, the USA and Brazil will be stronger than usually thought and will assure larger markets for their goods.


So the international trade between these nation won`t be in Chinese, and the US already has kept Mexico in its sphere of influence economically speaking assuring a 125 million people market to ist 300 million in 2020 plus a less than 45 milion market Canada will have in 2025, central america sooner or later will join NAFTA and already severla nations have signed free tarde agreements with NAFTA member nations and this will add at least 50 million people more to NAFTA.

So the US will use NAFTA as a first step to increase its economic recovery, the fact the canadian dollar today is worthed as much as the US dollar makes economic merging even more likely.

The Economic Influence of India will be quit similar to China`s in 2020.

kyanges said:

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? .

I say, fund it!


Actually, why isn't it being supported more?

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I am a Linux user and want to see MS sink. But when I see it producing something good I acknowledge it.

I don't think whatever has anything to do with which language becomes more dominant. It has everything to do with how multilingual a country is going to be. English is the dominant language that buys time for Americans who tend not to care about speaking any other language. English may be the dominant language but still the majority of the world have native languages than are non-English. There's going to be a day where Americans will feel left out and paranoid when they see people of different nationalities in business speaking a language they don't understand. I've actaully known more Americans than not who automatically believe when they see two people speaking a language other than English, they're talking about him or her. India brags about how their English skills give them an advantage over China. Why are they behind China then? How has China become the factory of the world for foreign corporations? I read an article about doing business in China and it interviewed a businessman from Mexico. He traveled over to China where whoever he was doing business with there had an interpreter waiting for him that spoke fluent Spanish. The guy was impressed because he said the interpreter spoke better Spanish than many people he knew. Human nature people are going to speak where they're most comfortable. How many people that are not Chinese speak Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect? Probably not that many. So how has China become a major economic player in the world? Contrary to what the West wants to believe the majority of China's international business is not from the US and Europe. They maybe the big parts but not the majority. And why did China weather the Western financial storm in 2008 better than expected when those in the West were waiting for China to collapse? Because of maybe China's domestic and diverse international business was conducted where English didn't really matter? I bet China probably is more multilingual than most countries and that's going to be China's advantage.