How long will English be the no. 1 foreign language

[Bamboo Grove]

The Chinese are coming but is it a surprise?

10,000 Chinese teachers on the way
Published: 24/06/2012 at 10:00 PM Online news: 17
Share
China has agreed to send 10,000 language teachers to Thailand as part of an educational and cultural exchange, state-run MCOT reported Sunday.

Education Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech made the announcement after meeting with Xu Lin, director of the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), and delegates from Chinese universities and educational institutes, the MCOT report said.

Chinese schools will send 10,000 language instructors for Thai students, Mr Suchart said.

Under the plan, between 500 and 1,000 Thai-language instructors will travel to China to teach Chinese students.

Mr Suchart said the new agreement will massively step up a programme under which China currently sends around 1,200 Chinese native speakers to Thailand annually.

One of the aims of the plan is for the Thai instructors to teach Thai to the Chinese instructors who then will teach in Thailand.

Official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday that 24 Chinese universities currently offer Thai language courses.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews ... on-the-way

[brianks]

Oh, yes whatever China can do to tie other countries to theirs, they will do. Notice they want to replace the Dollar with the RMB. Notice too that they are claiming sovereignty over every dot of land out to sea beyond their borders. Its called "exercising your power".

[Lung Per]

Oh, yes whatever China can do to tie other countries to theirs, they will do. Notice they want to replace the Dollar with the RMB. Notice too that they are claiming sovereignty over every dot of land out to sea beyond their borders. Its called "exercising your power".

Yep, not only Asia but now also Europe. They want to buy up a piece of Iceland and are looking at Greenland (geographically North America but a Danish possession) for minerals and precious metals.
Soon they will be all over us. Yellow fever to us all!

[deepee]

Money talks.
The Chinese have the money.
All that the Chinese talk about is money.
Thais love money.
If you are Thai and you want some money you will learn to speak Mandarin.
Game just about over for English me thinks.

[Dannie Boy]

Money talks.
The Chinese have the money.
All that the Chinese talk about is money.
Thais love money.
If you are Thai and you want some money you will learn to speak Mandarin.
Game just about over for English me thinks.

I don't think so, if you read the attached (albeit it 2 years old) it shows how China is very actively pushing its people to learn English.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/China/china-pu ... d=12154435

[deepee]

I don't think so, if you read the attached (albeit it 2 years old)

The world is changing rapidly DB, and China's influence has increased heaps in that period
see a more recent view.
http://www.studycli.org/news/more-firms ... n-speakers

[nanyang]

English -read American - is the global (business) language.

That isn't going to change in the foreseeable future - for many reasons.

Chinese (Mandarin) is the most spoken languauge in the world but few non-Chinese can speak Mandarin.

English/American is here to stay for a long time.

[roundeyes]

Question - Are there too many immigrants in Canada ? 17% said yes; 11% said No; 72% said "I am not understanding the question please."

enough said !!!

[charlesh]

Mandarin is already the language spoken by most people however it is not the most widely spoken and English (not American) is perhaps the most widely spoken!
The Thais are so lazy re:language learning that 1,000,000 Chinese Mandarin speakers are unlikely to make much of a dent even with Bht, RMB or $'s dangled in front of them.

[dtaai-maai]

Question - Are there too many immigrants in Canada ? 17% said yes; 11% said No; 72% said "I am not understanding the question please."

enough said !!!

A slightly bizarre prejudice as 99% of Canadians are immigrants!

[deepee]

My wife just noted that on our way thru Phuket airport on Friday night that many pa announcements were in Mandarin.Phuket has become a very pouplar destination for mainland chinese over the past 18 months.They outnumbered other travellers in the lounge by 2 to 1 easily.

[Jimbob]

National tourist offices of many countries in the eastern hemisphere are chasing the Yuan of the new middle class of China as the tourists of Western countries, affected by the GFC, stop travelling..

Not the first time the Chinese have come so far south in the last 600 years

[Roel]

TAT is specifically targeting China and other Asian countries as the European well has pretty much run dry.
The majority of the tourists on Phuket at present are from China easily outnumbering the Russians and visitors from several Arab countries.

Back to topic.
English has an unassailable position as the absolute number one (business) language in the world and this will be the case for another long time if not forever.
The Chinese want to do business and open up to to the rest of the world and they certainly are aware that it is easier to educate your own people and let them learn English instead of trying to force people from other countries to learn Mandarin.

[Jimbob]

I have been attempting Chinese language at the local Confucius institute for the last two years. Being so difficult to learn will make its popularity limited. China is funding many Confucius institutes at over 100 universities around the world. (they hate you calling it Mandarin).

Through migration Chinese (Mandarin if you will) is now officially the second most spoken language.

From 'The Australian' newspaper 21/6/2012

MANDARIN has overtaken Italian as the second-most spoken language after English in the nation's households, the 2011 Census has shown.

Mandarin showed the biggest increase of the nation's top 20 languages, growing 52.5 per cent to 336,410 or 1.6 per cent of households.

In the 2001 and 2006 censuses English was followed by Italian and then Greek.

More than 300 languages were reported as being spoken in the nation's homes

[Dr Michael]

Mandarin is an English word.
The Chinese call the language putonghua--The common Language

Just back from Shanghai--it took me 3 days to get a tourist visa.
They asked for a letter of reservation from the hotel, A copy of my bank book showing I had over 200,00baht in the bank and if I had claimed I was staying with a friend a letter of invitation from him. I was speaking at a meeting and they wanted the organisers address tel numbers etc I got everything but lost 2 days.
When I got to China I learnt that in Beijing they are having a BIG crackdown on people entering on T visas and working.