Chinese to dominate Web traffic by 2007? Unlikely and, even if
true, it doesn't mean we're all going to be learning Chinese.
The printing press has been global for a few hundred years. Yet go
to China and you'll find lots of books in English. I'm hard-pressed
to find any Chinese textbooks in my local UK bookstore.
There is an explosion of English language training and English-
medium education in China, recognising the current and future
reality of English as the global language: of business, of politics
and, increasingly, of culture and education.
Global linguistic hegemony isn't about how many people speak a
first language, it's about economic power, it's about military and
political power, it's about cultural power, and it's about first mover
advantage.
We can celebrate the net as a means of supporting diversity and
we can moan about monolinguism, but we can also recognise the
reality - even the benefits - of linking peoples from around the world
through a common technological medium and a common language:
English.
Richard Heeks
On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 22:11:27 -0500 (EST), Donald Zhang Osborn wrote:
>
>Re John Lawrence's reference to Chinese on the web, the following
quotable by
>NY Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman from his article last week entitled
"Hype
>and Anti-Hype" may be of interest
>(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/23/opinion/23FRIE.html ):
>"The measure of what's happening with the Internet today is not Buy.com
or the
>Nasdaq. It's what is happening in China, where Internet deployment is
moving so
>fast that Chinese will be the most popular language on the Web by 2007; in
>India, where AOL just announced a $100 million investment; and in Europe,
where
>the net economy is expected to grow twentyfold by 2004."
>
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