Chinese Is The Future Of The Net

from the English-what? dept

Who says English is the langauge of the internet? Time to start signing up for classes on how to surf in Cantonese, as Chinese is the predicted language leader on the internet in five years. Of course, hopefully, by then things like Babel Fish will work well enough that we ignorant English yakkers won't have any problems reading sites in other languages.
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  1. identicon
    todd, 7 Dec 2001 @ 11:55am

    grrr....

    abso-fucking-lutely absurd. 15% of the world's population, sure, but 1% of aggregate domestic product and the lowest internet penetration numbers of any nation at that level of GDP.

    Oh yeah, now I read the article a bit more: put out by the ITU. That braintrust shouldn't predict anything but the demise of their weakly-established standards.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Duffman, 7 Dec 2001 @ 2:15pm

    Heard this years ago, sorta

    When I was in high school (5 years ago or so), I was encouraged to take Japanese and/or Chinese and/or Mandarin (etc), as they would become the languages to know for almost anything, especially business, once I finished university. I didn't, I may sometime in the future, but for me, this prediction follows the same route most predictions follow - believe it when I see it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Tech 'N Artist, 7 Dec 2001 @ 2:23pm

    Considering the spam they put out

    It seems that about 80% of the spam I get, well Spam Cop filters it out, comes through .cn servers.

    China should have an intranet, not an internet. Cut the damn phone cables out of China and give other tin pot countries a chance to make money from hosting spam services.

    Well, I feel better now.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    msykes, 7 Dec 2001 @ 3:19pm

    ?

    Hang on, isn't China the country that censors out basically any foreign news site like CNN? (except for a couple weeks after 9/11). Doesn't sound like a country that's poised to take over the internet anytime soon. Heck, anytime.

    msykes

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    mhh5, 9 Dec 2001 @ 4:18am

    I'm the first...

    to criticize reports that extrapolate rates of growth that make ludicrously misleading statements like: "at their current growth rate, Mormons will become the world's dominate religion by 2015"... However, while I don't think we'll be speaking Chinese that soon, I do think globalization will have an increasing effect on us. And it might make sense that Chinese would creep up more than other romance languages since people who speak other romance languages often also speak english, while Chinese speakers may or may not convert to english.... These are all huge extrapolations, so grains of salt must be taken daily.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    andrea, 9 Dec 2001 @ 7:39am

    chinese

    Being reasonably bilingual is a great thing, innit?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Canadian in China daily reader, 9 Dec 2001 @ 10:30pm

    Cantonese???

    You can if you want... but brushing up on your
    Putong Hua (People's Lanuage) will get you alot
    futher since it's the official language of China.
    Not Yue or Guandong Hua (Cantonese).

    As to all the good news being censored? Fei Hua!
    Sure I miss out on CNN from the net, but it comes
    in off the bird, same with BBC. However as a
    Canadian , I enjoy my Pluse24 and the Toronto
    Star online mei you wen ti! For the Americans
    www.nakednews.com is still wide open for CNN
    highlights that's easier on the eyes.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous, 9 Dec 2001 @ 10:41pm

    Bilingualism on the net

    More people in China speak English than in the United States. Plain fact! English won't go away anytime soon on the net unless the 70% of the world that doesn't speak English as a first language wants it to.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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