Arabic or Chinese?

[Deucalion]

English is the language of government in India, which is an economy on the rise and a very populous country.

This seems strange to me as it is the language of the old colonial oppressor but using English is preferable to favouring any ethnic group or language. If Latin and Ancient Greek still have a big impact on languages today, 1500 years after the powerful political entities which used them fell from grace, I suspect English will be as difficult to erase.

Go 1500 years into the future and maybe English will be nothing more than the official language of the world religion of Scientology but it will still be around in some form I would think.

[ozleicester]

Pfft, easy decision this one.. i mean.. how many "Arabic" restaurants are there?

Think of the myriad uses to impress the ladies when it comes to ordering dinner

[Zingari]

Pfft, easy decision this one.. i mean.. how many "Arabic" restaurants are there?

Think of the myriad uses to impress the ladies when it comes to ordering dinner

Yes , mastering an exotic tongue is a sure fire way to impress the ladies .

[Finnegan]

FIF and spherical having a mare.

If Mooseler said that grass was green would you argue?

[ozleicester]

Yes , mastering an exotic tongue is a sure fire way to impress the ladies .

你知é“它å¯ç§Ÿå¯ä¹°è®¡åˆ’“

[Zingari]

你知é“它å¯ç§Ÿå¯ä¹°è®¡åˆ’“

Stop talking like a cant ................onese person !

[James.]

FIF and spherical having a mare.

If Mooseler said that grass was green would you argue?

Sometimes you just need to give the lad his due, he gets it right sometimes.

Interestingly I spent a few days in Rwanda last week and learnt that they are now moving from French to English as their primary language (alongside the local Kinyarwanda which everyone speaks). Interesting article on it here actually... http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/16/rwanda-english-genocide

Like the article alludes to I doubt the only reason is to strengthen relations with Engish speaking neighours like Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya but also as part of a wider move to put the genocide (which had its roots in Belgian colonialsim and was also partly supported by the French government - truly shocking) behind them.

[Jon the Hat]

FIF and spherical having a mare.

If Mooseler said that grass was green would you argue?

He is going a bit far to suggest it will be of no use to speak Mandarin. There will be plenty of companies who are keen to have someone who understands their own culture but can speak Mandarin. English will remain the language of business, but that is not the same as saying if you speak only English you will have the same opportunities as people who speak other languages.

[lavrentis]

Learn whatever you'll most enjoy IMO

[BoneDog]

I can speak a little bit of Arabic. Tried to learn more myself just from audio but it's a bit hard.

Like the op I'm also thinking of fully learning either Arabic, Mandarin or Russian, but not sure which one to go with yet.

It was someone on here who said that they are a freelance translator that inspired me to try and learn one.

[Fox in the North]

I can speak a little bit of Arabic. Tried to learn more myself just from audio but it's a bit hard.

Like the op I'm also thinking of fully learning either Arabic, Mandarin or Russian, but not sure which one to go with yet.

It was someone on here who said that they are a freelance translator that inspired me to try and learn one.

At the minute i'm fluent in Spanish and learning French and Russian. Currently working in South France. Would like to see if I can push myself that bit extra and learn something completely off the chain.

[sphericalfox]

He is going a bit far to suggest it will be of no use to speak Mandarin. There will be plenty of companies who are keen to have someone who understands their own culture but can speak Mandarin. English will remain the language of business, but that is not the same as saying if you speak only English you will have the same opportunities as people who speak other languages.

Precisely.

[MooseBreath]

If a business really wants a British mandarin speaker then there is plenty of British Chinese around. It will take the op maybe six or seven years of part time study to get to a reasonable standard, during which time he could have learned much more in demand and valuable skills.

Besides, the China growth story isn't new, it has been in full swing for about a decade and is now slowing down. As far as I'm aware there aren't great swathes of businesses currently desperate for British mandarin speakers, so I don't see where this rush of demand is going to come from.

It won't do the op any harm, and some employers might like it from a 'personal interests' point of view, but learning mandarin as a career move is at best a very inefficient use of time.

[Guest]

If a business really wants a British mandarin speaker then there is plenty of British Chinese around. It will take the op maybe six or seven years of part time study to get to a reasonable standard, during which time he could have learned much more in demand and valuable skills.

Besides, the China growth story isn't new, it has been in full swing for about a decade and is now slowing down. As far as I'm aware there aren't great swathes of businesses currently desperate for British mandarin speakers, so I don't see where this rush of demand is going to come from.

It won't do the op any harm, and some employers might like it from a 'personal interests' point of view, but learning mandarin as a career move is at best a very inefficient use of time.

English is the lingua franca - If you are too small minded to understand the import of that I'm not going to change your thinking. I didn't say that English wouldn't be the language of business in the near future but the arrogance to believe it will continue to be mid term is simply that arrogance.

India is the great hope for English but I think living in Leicester has perhaps misled you to thinking that Asian English is the same as British English or American English.

The Englishes of the world are diverse, but just as we don't speak Greek or Latin anymore, English has peaked in it's world prominence and is now on it's descent. World actions could easily speed that descent up.

[Guest]

FIF and spherical having a mare.

If Mooseler said that grass was green would you argue?

It's not personal just fun.

Anyway who claims that grass is green? There are many varieties of grass that are not green.

[I am Rod Hull]

It's not personal just fun.

Anyway who claims that grass is green? There are many varieties of grass that are not green.

Finnegan was right.

[Guest]

Finnegan was right.

[Guest MattP]

Some people on this board really do just want to argue for the sake of it if a point is made by someone they don't like.

[MooseBreath]

English is the lingua franca - If you are too small minded to understand the import of that I'm not going to change your thinking. I didn't say that English wouldn't be the language of business in the near future but the arrogance to believe it will continue to be mid term is simply that arrogance.

India is the great hope for English but I think living in Leicester has perhaps misled you to thinking that Asian English is the same as British English or American English.

The Englishes of the world are diverse, but just as we don't speak Greek or Latin anymore, English has peaked in it's world prominence and is now on it's descent. World actions could easily speed that descent up.

I think I get where you are coming from now. You think I am championing English out of national pride, and you being the worldy liberal bohemian type will take any opportunity to show how worldly and liberal and bohemian you are so when someone comes along showing national pride (which you hate, man made boundaries and all that), you will quickly move to disregard them even when it means making yourself look like an idiot.

"Oh look at him", you say, "look how he is all proud of England and that, I'm gonna prove how much better I am than him by taking the opposite stance regardless, that'll make me look well clever and on a whole different level and all the girls will surely like me." Well sorry fif, but no, for one my opinion is not born out of pride, and for two this kind of behaviour doesn't make you look clever, it makes you look like a cock.

I understand you though - I was the same actually, when I was about 19 and revelling in my new found independence. This I suppose is the fundamental difference between intelligent right wingers and intelligent left wingers - the right wingers grow out of that nonsense as soon as they realise how unrealistic it all is, while the left wingers don't.

But that's all beside the point. Most of what you have said here is a load of crap, as per usual. I have spent close to a year in India in total so am well aware of how they speak. Dialects of English such as British, American and Indian are all mutually comphrehensible so I don't really get your point? It is not like people are forming a new kind of English that we British won't be able to understand, except perhaps in some irrelevant and extreme cases like ghetto street slang in Belize or whatever.

What do you consider "mid term"? Which language is going to take over English? Any proof that English is "on it's descent"? What are these "world actions" you speak of? Why are you such a relentlessly self hating fool?

[Guest]

I find it hard to believe that you've spent a year outside your room let alone in India. Remind me what your job is again.

And I can assure you that I'm more proud of England than you will ever be.

Better try a new line of reasoning.

[Vacamion]

This is a good point as well. I think the technology required to instantly translate one spoken language into another is pretty close. This could potentially wipe out a lot of demand for bilingual staff.

I disagree.

Linguists and Psychologists who favour the computational theory of the mind would also disagree. Stephen PInker doubts in at least two of his books that instananous interpreting is possible or will be for a considerable time to come.

I know enough languages to know that some concepts are untranslatable, or translatable only with a whole load of context / culture / background or workaround.

Think of the difficulties you have speaking with a Yank or an Aussie and multiply that by the differing cultural reference points. Now multiply THAT by the difficulty caused by different language types (Turkish or Japanese sentence structure is pretty much the opposite of ours, Germans can leave their verbs hanging to the end of the utterance, Mandarin and other languages rely on differences in tone to impart meaning, etc etc). Now add in the problems of translating idioms ("pushing up the daisies", "to lose your bottle", "raining cats and dogs").

The best example of this is dictation programmes in your own language. I use an up to date version of "Dragon" dictation. It's good. It's light years better than what was on the market a couple of years ago, but it still takes a load of training, it still fluffs up very often and needs to be watched like a hawk and you still need to individually spell out loads of stuff or speak slowly. You just can't use dictation programmes at conversational speed and you can't rely on them to be 100% accurate.

I think the most we'll get is interpreting devices or programmes that can give you "the gist" (like Google translate does at present) or interpreting devices that will only work if both parties restrict their interactions to received pronunciations, standard vocabularies and the avoidance of idiom.

Traduttore traditore

[MooseBreath]

I find it hard to believe that you've spent a year outside your room let alone in India. Remind me what your job is again.

And I can assure you that I'm more proud of England than you will ever be.

Better try a new line of reasoning.

No I think I hit the nail on the head already, thanks

[MooseBreath]

I disagree.

Linguists and Psychologists who favour the computational theory of the mind would also disagree. Stephen PInker doubts in at least two of his books that instananous interpreting is possible or will be for a considerable time to come.

I know enough languages to know that some concepts are untranslatable, or translatable only with a whole load of context / culture / background or workaround.

Think of the difficulties you have speaking with a Yank or an Aussie and multiply that by the differing cultural reference points. Now multiply THAT by the difficulty caused by different language types (Turkish or Japanese sentence structure is pretty much the opposite of ours, Germans can leave their verbs hanging to the end of the utterance, Mandarin and other languages rely on differences in tone to impart meaning, etc etc). Now add in the problems of translating idioms ("pushing up the daisies", "to lose your bottle", "raining cats and dogs").

The best example of this is dictation programmes in your own language. I use an up to date version of "Dragon" dictation. It's good. It's light years better than what was on the market a couple of years ago, but it still takes a load of training, it still fluffs up very often and needs to be watched like a hawk and you still need to individually spell out loads of stuff or speak slowly. You just can't use dictation programmes at conversational speed and you can't rely on them to be 100% accurate.

I think the most we'll get is interpreting devices or programmes that can give you "the gist" (like Google translate does at present) or interpreting devices that will only work if both parties restrict their interactions to received pronunciations, standard vocabularies and the avoidance of idiom.

Traduttore traditore

That's interesting. I was reading one of the bbc's magazine articles online about this the other day, they made it sound as if the technology wasn't far off, perhaps they were wrong

[Captain...]

I think I get where you are coming from now. You think I am championing English out of national pride, and you being the worldy liberal bohemian type will take any opportunity to show how worldly and liberal and bohemian you are so when someone comes along showing national pride (which you hate, man made boundaries and all that), you will quickly move to disregard them even when it means making yourself look like an idiot.

"Oh look at him", you say, "look how he is all proud of England and that, I'm gonna prove how much better I am than him by taking the opposite stance regardless, that'll make me look well clever and on a whole different level and all the girls will surely like me." Well sorry fif, but no, for one my opinion is not born out of pride, and for two this kind of behaviour doesn't make you look clever, it makes you look like a cock.

I understand you though - I was the same actually, when I was about 19 and revelling in my new found independence. This I suppose is the fundamental difference between intelligent right wingers and intelligent left wingers - the right wingers grow out of that nonsense as soon as they realise how unrealistic it all is, while the left wingers don't.

But that's all beside the point. Most of what you have said here is a load of crap, as per usual. I have spent close to a year in India in total so am well aware of how they speak. Dialects of English such as British, American and Indian are all mutually comphrehensible so I don't really get your point? It is not like people are forming a new kind of English that we British won't be able to understand, except perhaps in some irrelevant and extreme cases like ghetto street slang in Belize or whatever.

What do you consider "mid term"? Which language is going to take over English? Any proof that English is "on it's descent"? What are these "world actions" you speak of? Why are you such a relentlessly self hating fool?

Oh Moosey, and I was almost starting to like you , until you started off on this Left wing, Right wing crap again, I am, in your terms, a lefty, but I have had a fair few disagreements with FIF, and sometimes agree with the right-wing mafia on here, we are not all the same, nor defined by our political leanings.

Other than that I completely agree with you, you don't need to bring political leanings into it to pick apart FIF's argument on this one.

[MooseBreath]

You can't deny that the way she is attempting to disguise her lack of real-world knowledge by maintaining an air of pretentious benevolence is typically left wing.