Economist story ("English beginning to be spoken here," 15 April 2006, p. 61) says:
"Today the Chinese are obsessed with English. Anything up to a fifth of the population is learning the language."
That would equate to roughly 250 million people. Hell, the US itself is just closing in on 300 million. That means it is overwhelmingly likely that more people study our language every day in China than do here in the States.
Tells you something about China's direction, yes?
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Comments (4)
English is huge in China and everyone I talk to seems to have a different reason for studying it, but the one common thread is that they all believe knowing English will help them get ahead.
Posted by China Law Blog | April 19, 2006 1:09 AM
I'd be teaching English in China, myself, rather than here in South Korea if the Chinese could match what the Koreans pay.
Posted by Jeremy A | April 19, 2006 1:38 AM
What's funny is that with so many english speakers in the PRC, it may alter the worldwide linguistic balance on the Internet. A lot of people have been putting effort into machine translation and making the Internet unicode friendly to accommodate the great influx of non-english speaking chinese and others coming on line. If those 20% of english speakers are predominant in the chinese internet, we're quite possibly going to see english gain enough heft to be the universal language period. The network effects may promote english forever.
Posted by TM Lutas | April 20, 2006 12:45 PM
But is the US investing enough in teaching some of its youth Chinese? With China-US relations the pivot of the 21st century, it seems an economic and security priority to develop the Chinese language capabilities of our young. And, for the present, it can be cheaper (tuition, airfare & living expenses) for many public school districts to send a student to China to study Chinese and live with a Chinese family than to educate them at home (cost of instruction only). Will not a knowledge of Chinese be needed to sell to the 80% of the Chinese who do not speak English? Will not a first hand knowledge of China and Chinese by more students (who become adults) help the US in shaping its relations with China?
Posted by Dave Porter | April 21, 2006 2:58 PM