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Post by LWPD on Jul 18, 2012 19:48:37 GMT -5
Below is an infographic on language trends throughout the world! "There are roughly 7,000 languages currently spoken around the planet today. As the world continues to become more interconnected, due in large part to the ever-increasing use of the internet, language use will undoubtedly evolve, as well. Check out our "Speaking of Languages..." infographic below to learn more about the future of the world's many languages."Courtesy of Transparent Language: Learning Software and Online Courses
Infographic: Speaking of Languages |
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Post by chewey on Jul 18, 2012 23:10:15 GMT -5
There is a caveat to Chinese being the world's most spoken language though.
Any Chinese language television programming always comes with Chinese subtitles, because unlike the United States of America, which is a fairly new country whose population exploded from the East Coast and spread at the same time that travel and mass communication was becoming more readily available, China is a country that has existed for thousands of years - most of which had travel restrictions based on how far you could walk or go by horse in a day. In my grandparents' ancestral village, people speak a dialect that is unintelligible to any Mandarin speaker, and barely intelligible to any Hong Kong native despite it only being about a four hour drive away from the island. In fact, I have met people who are from different neighborhoods than the two sides of my parental lineage who use different words.
Television and increasingly easy transportation is going to create greater uniformity in language though, and I think the American model can take a large amount of credit for perfecting the export of mass culture. The idea that everyone in America can watch the same movies and listen to the same pop artists despite geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds has caught on with the rest of the world where in the past cultural events and customs we have traditionally associated by nationality were really only products consumed by the upper echelons of society. The desire for everyone to be the same has created a greater economic demand for uniformity in verbal communication, and I believe has an even greater influence than its necessity in commercial transactions. Bollywood and C-Pop are actually larger industries than Hollywood and American pop music these days, and are catching on even here in America.
Thoughts?
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Post by LWPD on Jul 19, 2012 19:33:06 GMT -5
There is a caveat to Chinese being the world's most spoken language though. Any Chinese language television programming always comes with Chinese subtitles, because unlike the United States of America, which is a fairly new country whose population exploded from the East Coast and spread at the same time that travel and mass communication was becoming more readily available, China is a country that has existed for thousands of years - most of which had travel restrictions based on how far you could walk or go by horse in a day. In my grandparents' ancestral village, people speak a dialect that is unintelligible to any Mandarin speaker, and barely intelligible to any Hong Kong native despite it only being about a four hour drive away from the island. In fact, I have met people who are from different neighborhoods than the two sides of my parental lineage who use different words. Thanks for the insights. The other day I was joking around with a lady who was born in Shenzhen (who can speak both Cantonese & Mandarin) about how difficult it would be for an American to learn 'Chinese' because our alphabet only has 26 letters. She countered with the insane number of words those 26 letters can create, and all the weird grammatical rules we have.  Is the written language in China fairly universal, or are the differences across each dialect just as far reaching? |
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Post by chewey on Jul 20, 2012 0:22:14 GMT -5
Yes, the written language in China is "fairly" universal, but again with one caveat. In China they have "simplified" the characters a little to make them easier to write and memorize. Taiwan grabbed that opportunity to make sure they stuck with the "traditional" characters which in some cases are a lot more complicated to write - but they will brag about how they hold the 'history' of the Chinese language. It's all political crap. The Japanese on the other hand use a lot of the Chinese characters too for their base in kanji, but the recognizable Chinese characters are the 'traditional' version, and the rest are 'simplified' down in their own Japanese way.
But yes, the syntax and grammar structure, and accepted vocabulary of written Chinese is all the same throughout China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, even if the syntax, grammar structure, and vocabulary may be markedly different amongst the different regions and dialects. Which is why it actually makes sense that all Chinese programming (including live news feeds) come close captioned with Chinese subtitles.
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