Comments for Chinese World-Learn Chinese online http://www.chinese-world.org learn chinese everyday Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:14:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 Comment on The magnitude of Mandarin by Brian Barker http://www.chinese-world.org/archives/the-magnitude-of-mandarin/comment-page-1/#comment-2 Brian Barker Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:14:58 +0000 http://www.chinese-world.org/?p=469#comment-2 I live in London and if anyone says to me “everyone speaks English” my answer is “Listen and look around you”. If people in London do not speak English then the whole question of a global language is completely open. The promulgation of English as the world’s “lingua franca” is impractical and linguistically undemocratic. I say this as a native English speaker! Impractical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. That is how English is used internationally at the moment. Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential. An interesting video can be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670 A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net I live in London and if anyone says to me “everyone speaks English” my answer is “Listen and look around you”. If people in London do not speak English then the whole question of a global language is completely open.

The promulgation of English as the world’s “lingua franca” is impractical and linguistically undemocratic. I say this as a native English speaker!

Impractical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. That is how English is used internationally at the moment.

Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential.

An interesting video can be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

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