Keith, re your post below:
Chinese is just about the most finely chiselled language in the
world --
the most fully developed. And when China gets to the forefront
in science,
technology and commerce I think it will probably whop the
confused and
convoluted language that we call English (much as I love it).
Persian is a very easy language, has no gender, word order is critical
unlike Arabic and Hebrew, and were it more widespread, could easily be
mastered by many [Afghan Dari is a derivative and there are a lot of
similarities with Urdu]. The problem is that, once you get into Persian
literature, the simplicity becomes a handicap and Persian poetry relies
heavily on idiomatic phases which were beyond my abilities.
I also would vote for 'Bahasa' [originally a trade language]. It is
spoken in Malaysia and Singapore [Southern Philippines, Madagascar and
wherever the Bugis people roamed [ the original Boogie men -
http://www.indonesiaphoto.com/article180.html ] and was imported into
Indonesia to integrate a country that had some 60+ languages just on the
island of Java. I only spent 6 weeks in Indonesia but could compose
simple sentences by the time I left.
Bill
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 07:35:38 +0100 Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> On another list, discussion about the possibility of a world language
>
> continues and I wrote the following. Also, by coincidence, there was
> an
> interesting article yesterday in the Financial Times concerning what
> must
> be the most elitish university in the world. Until I read it, all I
> knew of
> this university was that, every year, several million young Chinese
> take
> the entrance examination for 3,000 places.
>
> <<<<
> KSH
> Although I think that English is a strong candidate as a world
> language, I
> wouldn't bet on it. Chinese is a much stronger candidate in the
> longer
> term. It is basically easier to learn than most others. It has lost
> all the
> appendages that other languages still have -- conjugations,
> declensions,
> irregular verbs, subjunctives, ablatives, and so on -- nightmares
> that
> plagues learners of most other languages. Chinese has also lost
> inflections, cases, persons, genders, degrees, tenses, voices,
> moods,
> affixes, infinitives, participles, gerunds and articles. It lost all
> these
> in the course of several thousand years of a largely unified culture
> and
> literature. There are no words of more than one syllable and every
> word
> has only one form. It proceeds by means of subject and predicate --
> that's
> all -- and explicates by means of metaphors. Thousands of them. Tens
> of
> thousands of them. More poetry has been written in Chinese than in
> any
> other language.
>
> Chinese is just about the most finely chiselled language in the
> world --
> the most fully developed. And when China gets to the forefront in
> science,
> technology and commerce I think it will probably whop the confused
> and
> convoluted language that we call English (much as I love it).
> >>>>
>
> <<<<
> A LEADER AMONG MANDARINS
>
> John Thornton tells why he has left Wall Street to teach the Chinese
> elite
> at Tsinghua University in Beijing
>
> Lionel Barber and Charles Pretzlik
>
> In the early 1980s, a brash young investment banker at Goldman Sachs
> named
> John Thornton took the City of London by storm. While English
> merchant
> bankers engaged in an agreeable lunch, Mr Thornton would arrive
> unannounced
> at prospective clients, make his pitch and seal the deal.
>
> Virtually single-handedly, Mr Thornton turned Goldman into a
> dominant force
> in European investment banking. In the 1990s, he pulled off a
> similar coup
> in Asia. Working a rich mine of contacts, he clinched several large
> deals
> and made Goldman a serious operator in China and Japan.
>
> Now, at 49, Mr Thornton is about to become the first western
> businessman
> since China's 1949 revolution to become a full-time professor at
> Tsinghua
> University, the country's leading university and training ground for
> its
> ruling elite. Always a thinker and operator on a grand scale, he
> describes
> his goal as nothing less than to make a decisive contribution to the
>
> evolution of China.
>
> "If I can contribute to the way China evolves and how that relates
> to the
> outside world and the US, that would be a good thing," he says in
> his first
> interview since leaving Goldman. He is at his home in Bedminster,
> New
> Jersey, a magnificent, sprawling estate once owned by Douglas
> Dillon, the
> investment banker and former Treasury secretary under President
> John F.
> Kennedy.
>
> Mr Thornton's switch from investment banker to academic was not
> entirely
> planned. He had hoped to crown his career on Wall Street, where he
> coveted
> the top job at Goldman. But for once this highly competitive
> individual (he
> is ferocious on the tennis court) failed to achieve his ambition.
>
> Hank Paulson, Goldman's chief executive, had his eye on succeeding
> the
> hapless Paul O'Neill as US Treasury secretary. But his own hopes
> were
> dashed by the Wall Street scandals and the White House decision to
> choose
> another industrialist, John Snow, for the Treasury job. When Mr
> Paulson
> made clear he was staying put, Mr Thornton quit after 24 years at
> Goldman.
>
> So how did he come to Tsinghua University? At one level, he says,
> the
> decision was logical. "There are four big themes in the early 21st
> century:
> the emergence of China; the turmoil in the Islamic world; the
> disgraceful
> way the world treats Africa; and the environment. China is the only
> area
> where I believed I oould make a significant impact."
>
> Mr Thornton also enjoys a personal relationship with the Chinese
> university. It dates back to an encounter he had in 1999 with Zhu
> Rongji,
> the reformist former Chinese prime minister. Mr Zhu asked Mr
> Thornton and
> Mr Paulson to find a replacement dean of the economic and management
>
> school, a post he had held with distinction since 1984.
>
> Mr Thornton replied that Mr Zhu was irreplaceable. But Mr Zhu
> persisted.
> And so Mr Thornton drew up a plan, along with the help of McKinsey,
> the
> management consultants, for a new Tsinghua advisory board whose
> membership
> would be split equally between westerners and Chinese.
>
> The idea was to introduce good chief executives to Tsinghua and
> develop
> ties with top-class universities around the world. The first session
> (which
> included Lord Browne, boss of BP, and Jorma Ollila of Nokia, among
> others)
> went swimmingly.
>
> When the opportunity came up to teach a course called the global
> leadership
> programme at the School of Economics and Management, Mr Thornton
> leapt at
> the chance.
>
> "If you were to put Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Chicago, etc, all
> together you
> still wouldn't have the concentration of future leaders you do at
> Tsinghua."
>
> From next month, he will spend 30-50 per cent of his time on
> campus. Some
> former colleagues wonder whether the irrepressible dealmaker will
> have
> enough to do. Mr Thornton is dismissive.
>
> "The intellectual, educational side of this is of sufficient
> interest to me
> that it can sustain me for a very long time," he says. "There is a
> new
> dimension to my life." (Just as well, as he is about to take an
> intensive
> course in Mandarin.) Still, Mr Thornton is not going to China simply
> to
> stand in front of a blackboard. He has spent a dozen years doing
> business
> there, including helping Richard Li sell Star TV to News Corporation
> and
> helping Mr Zhu prepare the initial public offering of China Mobile,
> the
> mobile telephone company.
>
> Mr Thornton is enormously enthusiastic about the potential in his
> job. The
> Chinese leaders are at a point in history where they are looking
> abroad for
> know-how to help manage the process of modernisation, he says. He
> would
> like to play a part in this historic process.
>
> "They have to have a growth rate that is high if they're not to have
> a
> problem. They have got to have ideas of sufficient scale ... to have
> an
> impact."
>
> The key is to create a critical mass of leaders to usher in change.
> Here
> China has an advantage. The country's elite, says Mr Thornton, is
> much more
> easily identifiable than the American elite, which is more
> culturally
> diverse and more geographically dispersed.
>
> By training 50-70 students a year, mostly in their late 20s and
> early 30s,
> he aims to have a direct impact on China's future business and
> political
> leadership.
>
> So far he has approached some 30 western business leaders about
> taking
> seminars on his course. They should be warned that he will expect
> more than
> a speech and a snappy question and answer session.
>
> "I would prefer to bring John Browne [CEO of BP] into a classroom,
> ask him
> what interests him, then it's my job to draw him and the students
> out over
> a two-to-three-hour period." While the students will learn first
> hand about
> leadership, western-style, their lecturers will "really see what the
> future
> looks like".
>
> Mr Thornton also wants to sensitise western elites to China and to
> Chinese
> history. "The single greatest need, certainly in this country, and
> probably
> in the world, is education for the elites about Chinese history. The
> basic
> facts just aren't known."
>
> In the US he has already begun working with the Brookings
> Institution, the
> Asia Society and Yale University, helping them to become more
> exposed to
> China. He also intends to draw on his formidable array of contacts
> in the
> US and Europe to network with the Chinese.
>
> "China is hard but not unknowable -- it's not so strange that you
> can't
> figure it out," he says. The problem is that westerners have failed
> to
> invest time and energy in China. "You can't . do it synthetically,
> by just
> flying around and dropping in. China is a culture" where personal
> trust,
> confidence,| matters most." Mr Thornton sets great store by underi
> standing
> the decision-making process in China. "This is a "priceless
> commodity", he
> says. The question is how to put it to good use."
>
> This is not a straightfor ward issue. Mr Thornton has ' an advisory
> role at
> Goldman and still has an office in New York. He sits on the board of
> Ford
> Motor Company, Intel, British Sky Broadcasting and Pacific Century
> Group.
> And he has had plenty of chief executives urging him to act on their
> behalf
> in China.
>
> He says he will be "helping certain clients I have known for a very
> long
> time and certain clients who are interested in China". But he adds:
> "I
> don't want it to be a major part of my existence because I've done
> that...
> I don't want to get very enmeshed in prosaic things." Above all, he
> says,
> he will not be doing anything to upset the Chinese.
>
> So if the dealmaker extraordinaire does not wish to exploit his
> position
> for commercial gain, what use will he eventually make of it? He toys
> with
> the idea of one day establishing an institute in the US devoted to
> China,
> or "doing something for an international body or not-for-profit
> body".
>
> But he also makes no secret of his interest in public life. Another
> former
> Goldman Sachs banker, Jon Corzine, gained election to the US Senate;
> but Mr
> Thornton seems to favour a political appointment to high office.
>
> Although a Democrat, he says he would be open to working for a
> Republican
> president; indeed, he voted for both Bush presidents.
>
> "The answer depends on who is president, what is the nature of my
> relationship with that person, how important is it to him or her."
>
> The decisive question is whether he can have an impact. For the
> moment,
> China is the target of Mr Thornton's relentless focus and energy.
> But the
> US is surely next.
>
> Financial Times 22 August 2003
> ---------------------------
>
> Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England,
> <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
>
>
>
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