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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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To: LindyBill who wrote (101504)	2/21/2005 6:27:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (4) of 793761

and I say this not just because English may win the competition. Mandarin might win; Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic Monthly devoted a lengthy 2001 story to the idea that Mandarin will best English in the struggle to be the global tongue. Mandarin has more native speakers but I'm pretty sure English is the most common 2nd and third language and if your just looking at the number of native speakers wouldn't Hindi have to be considered as well. Many scientific and technical terms are either taken straight from English. If there is going to be one global tongue its going to be a long time in the future and I don't think it will be Mandarin, however it might have a lot of Mandarin influences. Certainly English would be a major influence as well. but I can't imagine what mechanism would drive the spread of Mandarin much beyond China Well there are a lot of ethnic Chinese in other Asian countries and China is large and has rapid economic growth, but still I disagree with the people who think China will overtake the US economically, militarily, and/or diplomatically within a generation. I don't think that China can sustain its current level of growth. Remember awhile back all the talk of Japan passing the US economically. Maybe in 20 years people will look ahead and think India will pass the US economically. Eventually someone will but I don't think its going to be by 2025 like some people have claimed. I expect it might not happen in my lifetime. If you were making policy in one of those countries, choosing a second language to teach everyone, wouldn't you, like Mongolia, pick English? I think that teaching English as a 2nd language makes a lot of sense for most countries. In Mongolia you have English competing with Mandarin (China is right next door), and Russian fading (maybe fading fast) but still having some significance. Tim

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