Why has Mandarin still been an unpopular language?

Jeffrey   Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:23 am GMT
1. Because China has a long long way to go in some respects before he can meet high standards of developed countries such as US, UK, Japan, Germany, France.

2. Because many westerners always complain bitterly about how difficult it is to learn the character system, or regard Chinese simply as a complete waste of time.

3. Because there's still a lot of prejudice against China in western mainstream media, and it seriously misleads people into believing that China is an evil dragon. They would rather lavish praise on India quite often in order to restrain China from playing an important role in the world, while few people wants to talk about those shocking slums in Bombay and New Delhi.

4. Because China doesn't have any former colonies to spread Chinese throughout there, while some countries, for example Spain and France, have got enough native speakers of different countries to boost the deep influence of their languages.
Jeffrey   Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:34 am GMT
Sorry, correction, Mumbai & Delhi, (not the old name "Bombay").
Josephine   Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:40 am GMT
5. Chinese is ugly.

6. It truly is very difficult to learn.

7. China is evil. It holds military parades for the world to see its might, while its villagers, who number A COUPLE OF HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE, live in poverty and are extremely backward.
Jeffrey   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:16 am GMT
Josephine

5. Chinese is ugly.

6. It truly is very difficult to learn.

7. China is evil. It holds military parades for the world to see its might, while its villagers, who number A COUPLE OF HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE, live in poverty and are extremely backward.

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5. It depends on different subjective judgement, for example, some even think British English, Italian, and French are ugly languages, I would respect their opinions, but I know clearly they're largely false conclusions.

6. It depends on how efficiently you put your time and effort into learning it, if you learn almost nothing and spend every day hanging about in the bar, then not only Chinese but also the other languages would be difficult to learn for you.

7. China is a pacifist nation, US is an evil superpower, and by comparison with India, China spends much more financial allocation on the developments of infrastructural construction, industry and commerce, science and technology, and sanitary condition, while India always takes great pride in those weapons that purchased from US, France, Russia, and India thinks of itself as the most powerful nation in Asia, and again and again they took provocative actions on the boundary dispute. In China, you'll Never have any opportunities (except for the most undeveloped, impassable, remote mountain areas) to see those big shocking slum areas which can easily be found in the most developed, international, and largest cities of India. Am I telling you a lie or not?
Guest   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:30 am GMT
Didn't China attack India and steal its land?
Jeffrey   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:39 am GMT
Guest

Didn't China attack India and steal its land?

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The fact should be, India suddenly attacked on China, and China fought back in self-defense.
sinophobe   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:40 am GMT
<<
5. It depends on different subjective judgement, for example, some even think British English, Italian, and French are ugly languages, I would respect their opinions, but I know clearly they're largely false conclusions.>>


Yes, it is subjective, but art is also subjective. But Van Gough is famous for a reason. And I am not famous for another reason, because my paintings look terrible. The majority thinks Chinese is ugly.



<<
6. It depends on how efficiently you put your time and effort into learning it, if you learn almost nothing and spend every day hanging about in the bar, then not only Chinese but also the other languages would be difficult to learn for you.
>>


Except nobody is prepared to put in that much effort to learn Chinese. When offered with the choices:
1) learn Chinese and spend hours studying a day.
2) learn an easy language and spend half the time studying a day.
And arrive at the same level of fluency in a period of time.
What do you think people are going to choose?

Asking people to "just be efficient" is unrealistic.



<<7. China is a pacifist nation, US is an evil superpower, and by comparison with India, China spends much more financial allocation on the developments of infrastructural construction, industry and commerce, science and technology, and sanitary condition, while India always takes great pride in those weapons that purchased from US, France, Russia, and India thinks of itself as the most powerful nation in Asia, and again and again they took provocative actions on the boundary dispute.>>


Who's talking about India here? Do you see many Westerners learning Hindi? Ha ha! Although it does make sense to favour India as it has much closer historical ties to English nations and they speak English.
Jeffrey   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:58 am GMT
sinophobe

Except nobody is prepared to put in that much effort to learn Chinese. When offered with the choices:
1) learn Chinese and spend hours studying a day.
2) learn an easy language and spend half the time studying a day.
And arrive at the same level of fluency in a period of time.
What do you think people are going to choose?
Asking people to "just be efficient" is unrealistic.
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It still depends on whether you need to learn a foreign language. If you don't plan to work, study, travel in Spain or Latin America, and what's more, you don't have anybody to talk with in Spanish, would you have to learn it even if Spanish is easier than Arabic and Chinese? And if you were a language enthusiast, you wouldn't take account of realistic factors such as the difficulties and the usefulness. If one were not a stupid sinophobe, and he really wants to work or study in China, then Chinese wouldn't be a big problem for him to learn, no matter whether Chinese is harder than Spanish or French.
Guest   Fri Oct 30, 2009 11:06 am GMT
It is the difficulty of Chinese.

Students around the World have, for example, 4 major languages to study: English, Spanish, French and Chinese.

Almost all people choose English, and the second one is almost always Spanish or French because they are relatively similar to English.

In Western Europe and USA there is a tendency to study Spanish because it has the label of "easy language". Well, Chinese has the opposite label of "difficult language".

Students prefer to have an easy subject than a harder one. An example, over 85% of French students prefer to study Spanish than German as second foreign language. The difficulty of a language is a very important point.

PD. The prejudice against China is irrelevant. A lot of people hate USA and almost all people study English.
South Korean   Fri Oct 30, 2009 12:04 pm GMT
Guest //

Note that there are over 200 million people in the world whose mother tongue is similar to Chinese in many ways(Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese). For example, Koreans learn Chinese much faster than they learn English.
Josephine's Master   Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:15 pm GMT
Josephine, time to go back to your kennel.
Vet   Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:43 pm GMT
Josephine's Master Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:15 pm GMT
Josephine, time to go back to your kennel.
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Let her bark! She seems to need to do so to create a psychological balance... This is a phase some bitches go through.
Skippy   Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:56 pm GMT
Japanese and Korean are not like Chinese.
Sinophobe   Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:22 pm GMT
South Korean   Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:58 pm GMT
"Japanese and Korean are not like Chinese."

To some degree, they are. They do not belong to a same language family, but nearly 100% of the Chinese and Japanese vocabulary and 50% of Korean and Vietnamese uses/originate from Hanja/Kanji/Hanzi/Han du.