The Third of Eight Ways China is Changing Your World, So Says the BBC
“China has long fascinated the West, but its emergence as an economic power has seen a new burgeoning of interest in its culture and language. Thirty years ago, only its inscrutable leaders were recognized in the West. Now people like actress Zhang Ziyi, basketball player Yao Ming and artist Zhang Xiaogang are global figures.
Meanwhile schools across Europe and the U.S. are offering Mandarin classes to children as young as six, and during the Olympics, Chinese script could be seen on adverts on some London buses. China’s government has sought to capture the zeitgeist, helping set up several hundred Confucius Institutes around the world whose overt goal is teaching Chinese, but which also project soft power.
The number of Mandarin speakers is set to grow strongly, especially in Asia, but is it really able to challenge English as a global language? Not any time soon, most experts argue, pointing to its infuriating tones and a script which takes years to master.”
- About 840 million Chinese speak Mandarin as their first language
- Only 375 million people worldwide speak English as first language
- But 1 billion more speak English as second language, or have learnt it as foreign language
- Chinese has tens of thousands of characters, though 3-4,000 are enough to read the news
Source: Foster, Angus. “Eight ways China is changing your world.” BBC News, Beijing. October 15, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19797989
Sources: Ethnologue, British Council
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