number of natives is not important

tommyboy   Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:54 am GMT
One native speaker of language X who writes a quality production in his native language is worth 10000 native speakers of language Y who don't write shit, or 1000 who write, but only shit.

Hence Chinese isn't worth shit despite its shitloads of speakers. The same with Arabic and Spanish. German too, not because they don't produce shit - they do, but they write their good shit in English.

English, on the contrary, is worth shit. A whole heap of shit and some.
Guest1111   Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:15 am GMT
On the contrary, most Chinese, even if they can't speak Mandarin for shit generally write Chinese pretty well, and as all the Chinese languages are pretty much unified under one writing system, which the PRC government has made huge pushes for everyone to learn to a high standard, in written terms it is very much one, unified language that people can use fairly well.

However, spoken form I'd agree with you. I can't imagine overall any more than 50% are native speakers of Mandarin, and there is strong regionalism in China to the extent they often resent learning Mandarin and as a result don't learn it well, if at all.

So you're right, unless you're speaking to a naitve Mandarin speaker, which as I said at max is 50% of China, Mandarin in its spoken form ain't worth shit either.
O'bama   Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:31 am GMT
Well, the number of native speakers is not important, it is the economy.

But almost always an important economy and an incredible amount of speakers is the same.

If you see the big four languages: Chinese, Hindi, Spanish and English, only Hindi is not important in the economic field.

India prefers English as business language. At the same time, half of the Indians don't speak Hindi.

So, Hindi is not in this group, but English, Spanish and Chinese are clearly the most important in the economic field.