I’ve heard this comment many times from all sorts of people: it’s a good idea to study Chinese now because one day it will either overtake English or become the next global language. Most arguments then mention how many Chinese people there are, I mean, there are 1.3 billion of them! But since coming to China and studying Chinese for just under two years, I’ve come to view this idea of Chinese as a global language with some skepticism.
There are a few problems with this idea of Chinese as a global language like other, previous globally dominant languages:
First, China isn’t taking over any land far away from its own. This goes along with the idea that most people who speak Chinese are in China and not all over the world. Yes, there are large Chinese expat communities all over the world, especially in many China towns, but the majority of those expats speak the language of their host country. Further, beyond the second generation of immigration, most descendants adopt their host country’s language as their own and often have trouble learning or maintaining their ancestral language. Should Chinese become a “global language”, then that would mean on the streets of small town nowheresville, Saskatchewan, someone could travel through speaking only Chinese. Moreover, they could live in the town speaking only Chinese. This isn’t going to happen any time soon. By contrast, should you travel through China and land in a small town there is always someone who seems to know at least a little bit of English.
Second, the last two “empires” (if you want to call the USA that) have spoken English. The three before that (Spain, France, Netherlands) spread their language as they claimed distant lands but now mostly use English to communicate. Even the Russian empire was relatively contained in one area and its language isn’t heard as often in remote places. Instead, Russian speakers are closely centred around modern day Russia. The point is that the Chinese language, although it can be found in different parts of the world, is found mainly in areas around China. But that being the case, most of those countries also speak English. So, should China become more prominent (particularly by way of trade or defense) in its immediate region, then yes, it could be a more influential language. As it stands, however, this is way’s off even if it ever happens.
Third, the Chinese language, as the Chinese will tell everybody and have you believe and is in fact true to a certain degree, is simply too difficult to learn. The written language bears no resemblance to its spoken form and even within China itself are several dialects that cause confusion amongst the country’s own people. You can read my own progress of learning Chinese (part 1, part 2, part 3, but most importantly, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7) and judge for yourself whether or not it’s just me or if there is some validity to the claim that the language is difficult. Even the Defense Language Institute classifies Chinese as a “Level 5” language, which places it at the top (along with Russian and Arabic) as one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn. Yes, Chinese is difficult especially since most of us have very little reason to actually learn it.
Finally, a fourth possible problem with Chinese becoming a global language is that, despite the ubiquity of computers, most computers and their “languages” are in English. C++, PHP, Java, SQL are all written with Roman letters, English punctuation and Arabic numerals. And I doubt whether this will ever change. You might argue that one day computers will simply be programmed by speaking to them, but then we could just install a language APP to address the language barrier with future computers and robots. But who knows, maybe the Chinese will invent a Chinese-computer language?
That being the case, how could Chinese become more of an international language? China and its Chinese speakers have two things going for it: the first is pinyin, the second is technology.
With pinyin, Beijing formalized a method to transliterate Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet while preserving the tones of the original language. What is missing from the pinyin (literally “spelled sounds”), however, is the differentiation of characters that some sounds have. For example, much as we have synonyms in English, the Chinese language has words that sound the same (same tone) but their characters are different. If they can get by that little problem, then Chinese would be able to fully convey its language to the rest of the world. As of now, however, we must rely on context and more explanation when we come across the same sounding but different characters.
The next thing that the Chinese language has going for it is the spread of technology. Along with the ease of use smartphones and the internet have made studying languages, technology also makes it very easy to enter in the pinyin of a word and then select the correct character. Selecting the correct character, however, isn’t as easy as it seems (as you can see from my ability to actually read Chinese). However, should that be too difficult, APPs like WeChat (probably one of the best modern Chinese inventions and, if I may say, probably the “plateau” of social networking) make it easy to translate the written word. As soon as WeChat (or any other easily available and easy to use software) is able to translate spoken Chinese the language barrier will drop another whole level and probably even mean that fewer people will see any need for learning English, or vice versa. (I can hear the criticisms of that comment already and by no means am I saying that this is going to happen any time soon, but when it does, it would really make things a lot easier for a lot of people.)
Sadly, however, I truly believe that the days of a “global language” are slowly dying and that, in fact, Chinese will miss out on its opportunity to become an internationally spoken street language. The simple reason is that with the advance of technology, the more apparent trend seems to be the use of machines and the internet to translate whatever we need. Although many of these translations wouldn’t be sufficient for important conferences or meetings, it may only be a 25-year jump (if that) before we see the ability to translate the spoken word instead of just the written word.
Overall, if you’re considering studying Chinese just because it’s going to be the next global language, you might be waiting a while for that to happen. If, however, you want to study Chinese for the sake of broadening your mind and learning more about all the news about China, then yes, it certainly would be a good idea to pick up at least some of the language and its culture.