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World Languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4905 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 25 of 58 30 December 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose Mandarin could almost be considered a lingua franca according to the OP's criteria based on the fact that, for the majority of the 850,000,000 speakers it is a second language. Granted that most of these speakers are confined within China's borders. I wouldn't consider it a world language though as it's usefulness is confined, with the exception of Singapore and Taiwan, to one country.
The notable languages that are usefull beyond there original borders would be more in line with the original definition: English, Spanish, French and Portugese. I would definitely add Arabic also. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4584 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 26 of 58 30 December 2011 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm confused about this statement. Which Mandarin are you talking about, the standard register based on the Beijing dialect that is taught in schools nationwide or the whole Mandarin dialect group which is generally considered to be a single Sinitic language? 850,000,000 is the number of the native speakers of all the Mandarin dialects put together; the total number of "Chinese" speakers, many of whom speak Standard Chinese as a second language, is closer to 1.2 billion. I don't speak Mandarin, so I cannot judge about the mutual intelligibility between, say, Beijing and Sichuan Mandarin dialects, but most of the linguistics sources I have seen treat them as the same language, as opposed to Cantonese, Hakka, Taiwanese and other non-Mandarin Sinitic languages. The only Mandarin dialect that is largely considered to be a separate language is Dungan, for reasons similar to why Maltese is considered a separate language from Arabic, so I'm not sure if the majority of the 850,000,000 Mandarin speakers can be considered second language speakers of Standard Chinese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fortwenster Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4797 days ago 24 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1 Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 27 of 58 30 December 2011 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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My thoughts of world languages:
English Spanish French Portuguese Mandarin Chinese Arabic Russian 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 28 of 58 30 December 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
As far as I know, all varieties of Mandarin are considered mutually intelligible, although it might take some getting used to the rural version of some of the dialects. And Dungan is also considered mutually intelligible with Mandarin. Mandarin is of course a lingua franca for hundreds of millions of non-native speakers, and the only reason why it's not spoken in as many countries as European languages is because China preferred to conquer neighbours rather than faraway lands, and China has never let go of any conquered territory the way the Western counties have withdrawn (for better or worse) from their colonies. Heck, China still claims ownership of Taiwan! -- More general thoughts on the topic: "World language" is another of those meaningless words that can mean different things to different people. "World" is not commonly used as an adjective and has no clear meaning when used in a composite noun like this, so the concept is pretty elusive and people can read different things into it. I prefer to use other, clearer terms. We could talk about "international languages", which would be easier to define. Swahili is clearly an International language. Dutch is as clearly an "intercontinental language", albeit a very small one. We could probably coin a term like "giant language" or something, to describe languages with a large numbers of native speakers, such as Mandarin and Hindustani. These sorts of terms make it easier to know what the heck we're discussing, although they, too, can be hard to define in edge cases. But "world language" just muddles things. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4561 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 29 of 58 30 December 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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If we give a status of a World language to Mandarin, we should give it to Bengali too.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5644 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 30 of 58 31 December 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
Urdu is definitely taught in some schools in Britain and it is offered as an examination subject at GCSE and A Level. I think it tends to be ethnic minority children with a home background in the language who opt to take it. Both Hindi and Urdu can be studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London to degree level and beyond. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SmilingStraw Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4722 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 31 of 58 01 January 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, I agree. My original intentions were to discuss how each of the languages met the "requirements" listed in the Wikipedia artcle, but I worded it as "what do you think?", making it head another way. But, yeah, so then... Which languages could be considered international or intercontinental? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mad Max Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 4863 days ago 79 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Russian Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 32 of 58 01 January 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, an Intercontinental language, spoken in at least 2 continents by over 50 million
people are 5: English 4 (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa) Spanish 3 (North America, Europe, South America) French 2 (Africa, Europe) Arabic 2 (Africa, Asia) Russian 2 (Europe, Asia) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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