jimenato

"two DVD's for £5" is wrong?

Fred James

Most Cantonese speakers are outside China. In China Mandarin is the overwhelmingly most common language.

cricketman

I agree on both accounts

People forget that only 30 years ago French had an equal or larger impact internationally than English. English too will fade and something else will come. If it is Mandarin then that will come with the fall of the Amero-European dominance of the past 500 years and will mean a completely new world order

Problem is for someone who only speaks English, jumping straight to learning Madarin is very difficult. Stilll, the Japanese and Chinese do a good job at learning English. Maybe rich European parents will be sending their children to university in Beijing in 20 years time?

The "English is the international language" argument is just used by lazy and ignorant British and American people anyway

lynnxa

a friend asked me to check a booking that they had made by e-mail at a hostal - he was concerned that googletranslate said that the guy taking the booking had signed off with 'good riddance'


quite how it got there from 'buen viaje'

I ran it through myself & lo & behold it did!! - but if you just put the 2 words in without the rest of the message it does it OK

must be lost in context.............

lynnxa

of course it is

Fred James

My old school has been teaching Mandarin for a few years now.

It's not an option - it is part of the mandatory curriculum.

It starts at 5 years old.

agoreira

Agree, we won't being seeing Mandarin taking over in our time, and English certainly isn't in retreat. Even Spanish is using more and more English words all the time, I have read several times of Spanish academics complaining bitterly of the increasing use of English words instead of using perfectly good Spanish words. This first post in this thread is a bit tongue in cheek, but it shows some of the words used in every day Spanish, words that a few years would never have been used. A lot consider it "cool" to be able to include as many English words as they can.
http://www.notesfromspain.com/forums...ead.php?t=4534

Dick Dasterdly

[QUOTE=cricketman;10230783
The "English is the international language" argument is just used by lazy and ignorant British and American people anyway[/QUOTE]

What absolute tosh.

The fact is that most of Europe has made huge strides in the last twenty years to learn English which they have come to accept as the international language, essential in so many walks of life such as worldwide travel, Internet, business which now occurs much more on an international basis and other things too numerous to mention.

During this time it's the" lazy and ignorant " Spanish who have found themselves left way behind in the world order.

Belatedly the penny seems to have dropped and many of them are now desperate to learn and catch up.

About the only place I see them queuing these days is outside the door of English Language centres desperate to get a place on courses that are increasingly fully booked.

I think the fact that some of the locals have even resorted to asking me for help, for what little use I would be, amply demonstrates just how desperately important they now finally realise it is.

HBG

Within Europe, English is not only the business language, but the language for everything else as well, e.g. politics, show business etc.

It winds up the Germans, but their schools teach English from an early age. The Spanish never bothered much in the past, but they're desperate now. And the French? They still think the rest of the world should speak French, like they do in Quebec and Haiti.

Sam Greenfield

The problem with everyone else speaking English is its made us a very lazy nation for learning other languages - which is very embarassing and as a country it makes us look very arrogant xxxxx

Dick Dasterdly

There's a certain amount of truth in that.

However it's not happened as a result of any actions by the present generation, so why the hell should we feel guilty ?

cricketman

How did you come to that conclusion?

English was nowhere near as important 50 years ago. The spread of English around the world was first through the colonies, but its modern relevance is due to the spread of the US business model especially through marketing with its nonsense jargon designed deliberately to confuse and being untranslatable in other languages (I work in marketing, the world would be a better place without it!)

Its the US corporations who push the use of English both at the business and consumer level. Now its pretty accepted that anyone at a professional or manager level who deals with people overseas must speak English. Through marketing now you must speak English to order a burger at McDs or drink a CocaCola in any country

This is nothing to do with English being a better language. It is a result of the US being in an incredibly strong position politically and economy after WWII when all the other major powers had nearly wiped themselves out, and the US came out relatively unscathed. Look at the US role in the rebuilding of Germany and Korea for example and you will understand why they wanted to do the same in Iraq and Afghanistan

Dick Dasterdly

Same conclusion which ever way you choose to look at it.

If you prefer to put some of it down to the US it still wouldn't have happened had it never been a British colony.

Well the fact that you finally accept it, is at least one step forward and as I said its not the responsibility of the present generation of Brits, so I don't see any reason at all to feel guilty about the way the cookies crumbled.

jimenato

Why?

Retired in Euskadi

Nothing wrong with paying £5; as Bill Clinton might have said, "it's the comma, stupid".
No disrespect to you.