How economic power is transformed into linguistic hegemony?

Shuimo   Mon Nov 09, 2009 6:25 pm GMT
How do you think economic power is transformed into linguistic hegemony?
Evinória   Mon Nov 09, 2009 6:41 pm GMT
Porque poucas pessoas se interessam em aprender o idioma de um povo relativamente pobre ou que pouco signifique para eles!

Por exemplo, até pouco tempo atrás, ninguém iria querer aprender Mandarim, sendo que a China nada era. Agora que seu PIB e sua macroeconomia estão fortes, muitas pessoas se interessam, devido às oportunidades geradas por aquela economia, embora a esmagadora maioria dos chineses permaneçam à parte desse processo!
Clever guy   Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:01 pm GMT
Both points are united.

The 3 most important economic languages are English, Chinese and Spanish, according to the Steinke Spracheindex.

The first one is obvious.

Chinese is second due to the economic power of China. The GDP of China will be soon better than Japan and in 2025, even more powerful than USA.

Spanish is third due to economic power of 500 million of potential customers in some 25 countries. If you consider the GDP of all of them is at this moment the second in the World, after USA.


At the same time, linguistic hegemony is also economic power. For instance, the linguistic business is very important in the GDP of UK, and it is becoming important in Spain and Mexico too.

The "fight" between Francophonie and Instituto Cervantes (and others), not only in this forum, is more important than people can think. The second place in the World linguistic market is a lot of money.
Guest   Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:06 pm GMT
Anyway, they are not exactly the same:

The six most important economic languages (Steinke Index):

English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, German and French

The six most studied languages:

English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese and probably Italian.



For example, the two main Asian languages, Chinese and Japanese are not so important. Perhaps, it is due to the difficulty of them. Chinese is only 5th more studied and Japanese is not even in the top 6.
realidade   Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:29 pm GMT
Nobody is interested in studying Portuguese or Chinese, believe me.
dreams   Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:34 pm GMT
Here's the list in the U.S., per a recent study:

Spanish
French
German
American Sign Language (ASL)
Italian
Japanese
Chinese
Latin
Russian
Arabic

Spanish is by far #1, and French a solid second. The biggest growth has been in ASL, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic.