Is there anyone who is interested in Chinese

[stevenmai]

Just out of curiosity, because I heard them say that Chinese is the second most used language, but I don't see that. Maybe you would meet Chinese everywhere, but I don't hear any Chinese from western countries, just like English were heard in Asian countries.

[dfiant]

China has almost 20% of the worlds population, the largest english speaking nation is USA which has about 2% (sums done in my head based on 1 billion Chinese, 350 million USA and world population 7 billion). Then take into consideration that even though Chinese may be a first language, English would be a second language for a lot of Chinese. Makes sense that Chinese is the second most widely used language. Weather it is a fact or not I don't know, but with those numbers it makes sense.

[pellaz]

English as a spoken language
list of first & second english speaking population by country
Chinese as a spoken language
just seems NAmerica is top 10% or something


we gringos (including me) tend to lump all Asians together when there is considerable diversity. People and cultures thousands of miles apart. China has several languages?

After the VietNam wars Denver CO got a noticeable addition to its population, most of these are now second generation. The main second language here is Hispanic.

[fredv3b]

Whatever happened to the lingua Franca?


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[OrphanPip]

I think there are about 550 million English as a first language speaker (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ), and then there are far more second language speakers around the world from the colonial legacy (Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya), and then there are substantial numbers of speakers in Asia and Europe for economic reasons.

English is by far the most widely spoken language in the world right now, but not as a native tongue. As Fred said, it is largely the lingua franca of international discussion.

There's a lot of talk about Mandarin replacing English, but there isn't a widespread trend of learning Chinese in the West, and when it is available it is usually only at universities or maybe a handful of private language schools.

Also, I disagree that Westerner's tend to lump all Asians together as Chinese, this would depend on where you're from. Most of the Asian people in Montreal are from former French colonies like Vietnam and Laos. We also have substantial Chinese and Korean populations and anyone who doesn't make a deliberate attempt at social ignorance would be aware of this.

[Inchante]

we gringos (including me) tend to lump all Asians together when there is considerable diversity. People and cultures thousands of miles apart. China has several languages?

We do? I don't ever remember doing that, but I suppose I have always been one interested in history. And you cannot be interested in history and not take into account the development of various cultures and nations.

[ckoreanman]

I've always like chinese, very similar to Korean - Japanese but still very sexy. Never been with a chinese man though. I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

[fenris]

I think for Europeans it is very hard to speak asian languages.... Years ago I tried to learn a bit vietnamese.... and it was nearly impossible to speak because I can´t form out the words with my mouth. I can learn to understand .. maybe to read some simple things.. but to speak .. impossible. Ok .. to be honest I have the same problem with french... :redface:

[Bowyn Aerrow]

English is the language of business. Nope, can't blame America on that. Blame England and Empire - spreading its culture, language and business across the world it pretty much forced every nation it dealt with to learn English.

Native speaking is not the same thing as 'business'.

http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html lays out a chart of speakers and where of Native speakers.

Mandarin (Not really Chinese now is it?) Is spoken by roughly 1.151 billion people.

English is only spoken by roughly 1 billion people as a native language.

This list is only composed by nation - it makes the assumption that only that language is spoken by that nation, it takes the population of that nation and adds is.

It does not account for bilingualism, multilingualism or 'pidgin' speakers who have a smattering of words to get by on business trips.

Mandarin is used in some places here in the USA. You can ride the bus in San Francisco and hear nearly every Asian language spoken by American Citizens - granted most are of Asian descent or are in fact immigrants themselves.

I know that in China Town (San Francisco District) Mandarin is spoken, However other Chinese dialects and also spoken and maybe more in use.

I may not be able to list all of them, but I believe that China has a few languages, Cantonese, Hakka, Foochow and Xaing come to mind - I think there is three others (The winkipedia is blacked out tonight so I can check this as fact, sorry).

For the English Language English and only English is used -there may be minor differences such as the Brits calling chips (potato chips) Crisps and Americans calling British Chips french fries, but by and large they are similar enough to be considered the 'same' language.

Other languages spoken in English dominated nations are not considered 'English', AKA Welsh is known as Welsh - no one confuses it for English.

[princealbertofb]

I have started to learn and study Chinese (Mandarin) and I must say I found it a very interesting language to learn, not only for the way it presents ideas but also for it's beautiful writing.
Have you learnt Chinese too, Stevenmai?