China soon to be world's largesr English speaking country!!!!
- Thread starter James Bond
- Start date
Yeah but too bad their human rights record is so bad. Cheap labor=cheap goods so the world looks the other way 
I remember reading this quote from a Mexican journalist who had interviewed a retired chinese diplomat about China's plans...
"First, we were afraid of the big, bad wolf. Then, we realized we could be friends with the big, bad wolf....Today, we want to be the big, bad wolf."
"First, we were afraid of the big, bad wolf. Then, we realized we could be friends with the big, bad wolf....Today, we want to be the big, bad wolf."
I find that stat an urban myth. Think about it. Most of the population in India already speak English.
Here's one source for numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
Also includes numbers for second language spoken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
Also includes numbers for second language spoken.
China definitely has the world’s largest population of students studying English. However, they have a long way to go before they have the world’s largest functionally bilingual population.
China is a country currently going through a huge metamorphosis. In the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, there are many people who speak English but if you go almost anywhere else, you will seldom meet another who speaks English.
The state requires all students to learn English in school. They learn English in middle school and in college and university.
Unless the student is planning to do international work or tourism, they will probably never use their English. They will go back to their home town and only speak in Chinese. Most students don’t take their English seriously.
However, things are changing. Employers are starting to insist that they hire workers who have at least functional English. English is starting to work its way into the language. I think it will take at least a generation before China can call itself an English speaking country.
China is a country currently going through a huge metamorphosis. In the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, there are many people who speak English but if you go almost anywhere else, you will seldom meet another who speaks English.
The state requires all students to learn English in school. They learn English in middle school and in college and university.
Unless the student is planning to do international work or tourism, they will probably never use their English. They will go back to their home town and only speak in Chinese. Most students don’t take their English seriously.
However, things are changing. Employers are starting to insist that they hire workers who have at least functional English. English is starting to work its way into the language. I think it will take at least a generation before China can call itself an English speaking country.
China's still working on getting Mandarin fluency past 60%.
"A government survey in the mid 2000s found that only 53 percent of the population “can communicate in Putinghua” [Putonghua] and television broadcast continue to have subtitles to help people overcome misunderstandings of the language."
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=125&catid=4&subcatid=16
Until fairly recently, in some areas once school was finished, people would never speak Mandarin again and hear it only on national television and radio. (Television programmes are always sub-titled.)
"A government survey in the mid 2000s found that only 53 percent of the population “can communicate in Putinghua” [Putonghua] and television broadcast continue to have subtitles to help people overcome misunderstandings of the language."
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=125&catid=4&subcatid=16
Until fairly recently, in some areas once school was finished, people would never speak Mandarin again and hear it only on national television and radio. (Television programmes are always sub-titled.)
Not true.
The majority of the new generation in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore, regardless of their parents Chinese dialacts speak mainly in Mandarin.
For example, the majority of Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Chinese Singaporean, Cantonese in the mainland 30 years or younger have difficulties to understand what their parents speak other dialacts (Taiwanese, Fukienese, Cantonese, Wu, Hakka, Teochew, Taishan) since they must learn and pass mandarin exams in elementary and high schools. Chinese Singaporean are slightly different as they learn English as mother tongue, like those in Anglo-Saxon countries.
Those who get caught to have conversation in the Chinese dialects other than Mandarin between themselves are either discouraged by persuasion (in mainland China since there're just too many non-Mandarin speaking Han Chinese), fines (in Singapore), or worst thrown to jail(like Taiwan before the end of the martial law in 1988).
The only exceptions are those in Hong Kong and Macao, where they learn Mandarin as language of business, just like English (albeit sub par standard compared to other commonwealth countries) in the good old days.
The situation in Macao is similar except the Portguese never let the locals to learn/master the language as mother tongue before they left in 1999, for fearing the small number Macanese (half Portugese, half Chinese) could no longer keep their domination in the territory.
BTW, the subtitles one notice on TV are for middle age Chinese or above only. Many Communists cadres in power, including Mao and Deng are not Mandarin speakers. Their Mandarin accents (Hunan & Sichuan respectively) are so heavy that not all of the Comrades are necessarily understand without looking at the scripts!!
So until they could achieve 90%+ Mandarin fluency, where some critics call "cultural genocides" to other Han dialects group comparable to what the Hans Chinese are accused of doing to Tibetans and Uighurs, I do not see China is going to have more English speaking like mother tongue than those in the United States, or bilingual like the Chinese Singaporeans for that matter.
I don't know why, but I laughed my way through this post. Maybe it was the Engrish, or other malapropisms.
