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The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control
by moftz 5y ago
The lingua franca comes from the dominant culture of the time. The massive colonial empire of Britain move things from latin to English and the rise and control of the US has perpetuated English even more so. If the Anglo countries all sank into the ocean, I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. China would be the major trading power and without the need to work with America, there would be little need to continue with English as years progress.
- Goety 5y agoWell I would still say French would be dominant over Mandarin for several reasons. Technological advantages include current nuclear collaboration on the vast coast of China. China still does not have key infrastructure to self support. https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newschina-and-france-sign-several-agreements-6025527 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newschina-and-france-sign-s...
- thaumasiotes 5y agoA big joint project between China and France does not constitute an argument for learning French in preference to learning Chinese.
- umanwizard 5y agoNor does it constitute an argument for learning Chinese, assuming both parties already know English.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThe question was "if every Anglophone country sank into the sea, would people learn Mandarin Chinese, or would they learn French instead?" You seem to be answering some other, unrelated question.
- tablespoon 5y ago> I doubt it would be very long until Mandarin developed into the dominant language. I kinda doubt that, given its writing system.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThere have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified.
- tablespoon 5y ago> There have been various movements that have advocated for the use of pinyin as a primary writing system, for the same reason that Beijing replaced Traditional script with Simplified. I don't speak or read Chinese, but my understanding is there are a lot of homophones (and a culture of homophonic puns) that would make that undesirable (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Standard_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophonic_puns_in_Standard_Ch...).
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThere are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context. Look at it this way: you don’t need the characters when you’re listening to someone speak, so why wouldn’t you be able to sound out the phrase from pinyin and understand its meaning?
- tablespoon 5y ago> There are lots of homonyms but they are disambiguated by context. But wouldn't that lose something? My understanding is a lot of the puns specifically rely on the characters to force a different reading than the context would imply (or to evade censorship by having many ways to write the same sounds).