Now could be a good time to learn Chinese in preparation for the on-going shift of the world’s language.
Photo from Philip Jägenstedt’s flickr
The ability to speak, read and understand English is vital to communicate to a diversified range of people. It is the language of the world’s scientific academe and political reference. It is even predicted during the 19th century that English will be the world’s language.
But English is declining. Chinese is rising. And the world’s tongue is adjusting.
Chinese is now the most widely spoken language in the world. This is mainly due to the multitude of Chinese population. In China alone, there are more than 1.3 billion Chinese and those who are scattered around the world speak their own language as well.
In the business world, Chinese is sitting comfortably along English as the most useful language. Transacting business matters using a common language is essential for rapport building but also for the “speed and effectiveness of your negotiations”, says Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer in communications and ethics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
The Chinese people better use their voice because it takes years to fully master the language. Learners should find the best memorization technique that works since Zhongwen Da Cidian (Great Dictionary of the Chinese Language) lists 50,000 Chinese characters, whereas English only has 26 alphabets. Being a tonal language, different tones of the same word have different meanings. And there are variations in form of dialects – Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, and more. Each has internal diversity.
Despite the barrier of difficulty, westerners demand to learn it. Michael Roemer, an attorney who lives in California, brought his family to live in China. His purpose was to teach his two children the Chinese language because according to his own words, “speaking Mandarin is important”.
While Europe and USA remain the key players in the world’s economy, they recognize the gaining power of Asia, especially of the Chinese economy. Companies worldwide manufacture in China. The Chinese people are the biggest consumers of goods. Learning the world’s newest language would maintain the west’s competitiveness.
Language is power. Those who don’t speak it will be secluded. But China seemed to pass on this opportunity. It showed no interest to influence the world to make their language native. China casted English classes throughout the colossal country so the population could speak English when they hosted the 2008 Olympics.
Even without the slightest of effort from China, Chinese is still emerging. Right now, 9% of the population spoke English at birth. By 2050, it’ll be down to 5%. This gives room of expansion for the next major language.
Are you ready to learn the Chinese language?
Sources:English in Decline as a First Language, Study Says; National Geographic
Mandarin Chinese Most Useful Business Language After English; Bloomberg
Can Chinese Replace English as the Global Language?; Chilli breeze
Chinese learn English for Olympics; Chine Daily
Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard; pinyin.info
Moment Matters 
I’m still trying to figure out Spanish. I can’t see southern states ever adopting..Chinese…hmmm..interesting, tho.
English. Only.
I don’t dispute that Chinese is a hugely prevalent language, but I doubt it will ever become the chosen language for international interactions. Speaking from my own experience teaching English in Korea, I can tell you that the demand for English is huge. EVERYONE wants to learn English. People in other countries watch English movies, read translated English books, listen to English music, etc. Unless China makes a concerted effort to bring Mandarin up to the same influence level as English, I just don’t see it overtaking English. Then again, I could be wrong! I’m no linguist, or political scientist, or whatever. Just my two cents 🙂
English is, and for the long-term future, the business lingua franca. Your theory is actually backwards as most schools in China teach English as a required set of classes. How many schools in English speaking countries teach Mandarin as required class?
Can’t disagree with you more. The language is too difficult to make an effective in road into the business world. China hid behind the bamboo curtain too long for its language to be the force that English is.
Here are a few reasons why Chinese won’t work:
1) Even with the advantages of the microprocessors it is difficult for the native speakers to write in Chinese. They are relegated to pinyan to select the appropriate character. That means it is still not going to be as fast and effective as using English or another similar phonetic language.
2) The learning of a 1st language has nothing to do with the using of that language in a business environment outside of the country of origin. There are more people in China learning English than there are people that speak it as a native language. That tells me that they recognize the language of better living is not their native language.
3) I will call this one the “Language of Safety”. The language of communications that is required for airlines communicating with air traffic control is English. The difficulty of communicating in Chinese which has to include the tonation problem and multiple meaning so a similar syllable makes it impossible to use in a high-stress situation like an air traffic emergency.
4) Chinese can’t create new words to keep up with changes and advances in nearly all industries. The words that are used for advanced technical requirements and descriptions are a compilation of syllables that by themselves have a complete meaning. But I can smash them together with another word and call it a new word, but the fact remains that the group of characters may or may not be related to their individual characters. That fact alone has doomed the Chinese language to 2nd class status. It can’t effectively describe or identify the new object as intended. Phonetic languages allow more freedom to define the item, since it can use any of the characters and the pronunciation of that new word is standardized and unique to whatever it is that it is supposed to describe. Computers and Nuclear processes are classic examples of how the Chinese language fails to do the job.
Well, according to Joss Whedon the world will be speaking a bit of Chinese at least. In his series Firefly and later the film Serenity, everyone can speak a bit. And as they say ‘art imitating life’ and vice versa; it is mainly used for swearing. LOL
Why sure! Already started. It’s an easy language to learn at it’s most basic. Chinese all speak, too loudly, for sure. One should learn Mandarin. Most Chinese already in N.America speak Cantonese. Which is not the same. While it may be that english will stay prominent? Like other language unless you learn some. Who knows what’s being said behind your back?
Unless I get practice. It will fade like the German, Greek and French before. The writing however, proves more difficult. Right now, I’m trying Latin online. I would like to understand the written Latin.
Er, I feel obliged to point out that there is no language called Chinese, much in the same way there is no language called Egyptian. The language in China is Mandarin or Cantonese, much like in Egypt, it’s Arabic…
That’s the most complicated language to learn!
It’s actually pretty simple. The difficult part is learning to read all of the characters.
I agree that the languages of China, especially Mandarin, will become more and more important to learn and know. But I do not see the major shift you anticipate happening within the next 50 years.
I believe English will still continue to dominate as the most used language in the world. Moreover Chinese language by nature seems to be difficult to learn. Whenever it comes to memorizing something it is always a no no. It is very easy to learn english for a general walk talk so people prefer it over languages like Chinese or Arabic or others.
Btw, thanks for visitng my blog
Hi Justin…….many people in the Bahamas are now learning Mandarin because of the increasing presence of the Chinese…..they just constructed and opened a new embassy, donated and constructed a stadium and are constructing a multi-million dollar resort on the western end of our capital island that will compete head-to-head with Atlantis Resort…….seems like learning Chinese will be a necessity in the near future.
I liked your article thanks. You are pointing an issue whose importance hasn’t been fully understood in my home country, France (many are still reluctant to learn foreign languages, esp. Mandarin).
But I don’t think English is really declining. Taking the native speakers decline is misleading because a majority of English speakers today aren’t native! English doesn’t really belong to the US/UK/AUSTRALIA anymore, it’s a world language!
I experience this in my day-to-day work. I find a lot of UK managers are sometimes having a hard making themselves understood precisely whereas “international English” speakers use a more standard/functional English, easier to understand for the majority of non-native speakers.
The dilution of English is a bit sad but I guess there is always to sides of a token!
cheers,
Tarik | http://tchardon.wordpress.com/
I am terrible at foreign languages. This doesn’t bode well!
Back in the late seventies and early eighties when I entered high school, the school administrators fulfilled part of their mandate to offer cutting edge forward thinking education to prepare the “elite” students to lead the future by offering only ONE foreign language…..Chinese.