Submitted 3 days ago by TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world to [deleted]
As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not (or at least I never had access to one). Obviously places like Kora or Tibet have been effected in their history (I still want to read your answers 😁), but what about, for example, New Zealand? Or Sierra Leonne? Or Portugal? I’m just curious to see how pervasive the new Global Language already is by this point.
BonusQuestion: Is it mostly following their Belt-and-Road Initiative? Wouldn’t that be something?
Chinese is not a global language. And it’s not likely to be in the future. It’s not the raw number of speakers what makes a global language but the number of non-native speakers.
That being said.
In my country, Spain, it is not taught at any level as mandatory, and not even as an option. Of you want to study chinese you have to go to do as an extracurricular thing.
Yeah, my main lesson I’ve learned here is to type the draft while high, but only press Send after I’ve come down 😅 I don’t think it is now or will be in our lifetimes, BUT I do think that if a universal human language were possible, it would be more beneficial to base it on a Tonal system than an Atonal one (sorry Esperanto). But that is just my opinion, feel free to disagree, and thank you for your input 😁
But why would a tonal system be beneficial?
Umm, gonna answer as an American, for clarity: many schools across the US have language classes of all sorts. Every niece/nephew I know across multiple states could study French, Spanish, Latin, Chinese, Italian, etc, etc. Chinese is one of many (typically Mandarin).
It’s very common in US public schools, and has increased significantly over the last 50 years.
We only had Spanish for 8th grade and up. When I was in 7th they had high school French but cut it for budget before I got there.
What about Russian? Serious question; around here it was a relatively popular choice (we share a border with Russia) one or two decades ago, but I suspect this might have changed recently.
My school offered (from most popular to least popular):
I think my child’s high school offers the same, although I don’t know the relative popularities. I’m confident Spanish is still most popular, and judging by the number of posters around the school from German classes trying to convince kids to take German, I’m thinking German is still not very popular.
It’s a good question and I’m not dismissing you! But
As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not
that in itself is such an American thing to say. First the unspoken assumption that everybody understands what you mean by “religious”. And if I looked around here where I live I’m sure I could find a christian (which btw does not mean the same as in the US) school that teaches chinese. And probably even the leaders of such schools have never considered to separate languages into “christian” and “non-christian”.
The second half of your question seems a bit paranoid. Are you implying that every Chinese language class is secretly funded by the PRC? Are you afraid that your country might switch to Chinese at some point? Do you have a problem with English not being the No. 1 langauage, globally? I’m no friend of China’s political system, but this seems excessive.
Valid points, I appreciate that 🙏 Most of your question can be answered by the fact that I was high when I wrote the post and am just tired of using my filter in real life and I feel safe here on Lemmy.
And honestly, my specific Elementary school was very… unique. Looked them up a few months ago and they’re a few degrees of separation from Reformed Calvinists. Like, more than half of the faculty come from 2 small Evangelical universities in the middle of the Great Plains. They taught some usual stuff like math and spelling, but then there was also lots of time dedicated to studying the Bible, learned two different songs to memorize the order of the books, we had a “Bring your Priest to School Day,” yeah it was just a liiiiiiitle off.
I see your point in my (unintentional) divide into “christian/religios vs chinese” and nowadays I would never try to imply anything resembling that. Now that you mention it though, I do remember one day in 1st(?) grade where they had all the students come and listen to a sermon by a guest preacher (this was fairly common) and somehow the topic of ‘Chinese water torture’ came up? (I don’t remember anything more specific than that, I was very young, but I think a connection was made that shouldn’t have been)
As for the paranoia (besides the above annecdote), that was also unintentional. I wish I understood more about non-American culture and as an avid lover of history, I know a lot of times influence is not merely who won which battle and was curious to see if anyone else had more tangible examples than just theories or video game-logic.
Overall, the whole point of this was just to talk to somebody so thank you for that 🥰
Damn, I like your reply.
Most of your question can be answered by the fact that I was high when I wrote the post and am just tired of using my filter in real life and I feel safe here on Lemmy.
And that’s valid; but it might reveal things about your sub/halfconscious that other people will pint out to you, and will mistake for conviction. But if you’re OK with that…
I guess I’m a little too old-school to use social media like that, for me it’s more like a soapbox.
And thanks for yet another insight into the certainly not boring but terrifying world of the US education “system”.
yes, in France, in business schools, they definitely teach Chinese, as a choice, not mandatory.
I believe it is also possible to take Chinese classes during high school , again as a “3rd language option”, after English and /Spanish / German
Follow-up question: business schools? As in, specialization before high school graduation? I know there are a handful of ‘premier’ schools here in the states but most of them are expensive, exclusionary, and focused on simply getting INTO a better university (prep schools). Most of us just go through general public education which can vary wildly and you definitely do not (in most cases) get to choose between the “business” branch or the “engineering” branch
No, you are confusing “prep class”, which prepare to engineer/business school/university, with business school itself.
Business school is like a University , but private and expensive. It’s higher education (Master degree)
Singapore - Mother Tongue is a compulsory subject to take up until Uni. Being classified as Chinese racially, I had to take Mandarin during my formative years - but I’m still not good at it lol
I feel you, I still feel like I barely know how to speak English 🙃
My high school in a semi rural part of the Southern US had a Chinese language class that you could choose to take for your foreign language credit back in the early 2010s. I think it’s a false premise to say that it’s not taught in the US, most kids just choose to take easier languages like German, French, or Spanish
I definitely should’ve worded the post better but yeah I didn’t mean to imply that it’s never taught in the states. Just that my personal experience in the system (also southern but urban) didn’t really give me any chances 😕 But honestly a large reason for that probably just came from my particular setting (I’m NOT typing that whole thing out again but in one of my reply threads I go into more detail on the weird things I grew up learning)
In Australia, my high school offers German and Chinese mandatory in y7-8 but optional afterwards.
Not gonna lie, I can understand the Mandarin since you are geographically neighborly, but the German is surprising. Was that just your high school?
Most high schools offer French and Japanese iirc.
The French education system require to study two foreign language among a long list, so why most people take English + German/Spanish/Italian some people take rare language like Chinese.
To my understanding rare and hard language like Chinese (or Russian) are also a way to be admitted to a better school/class than your local school, so it’s often used by rich kids who want to bypass their local public school and be affected to a good school/class
Danke schön. This was basically the ‘format’ of answers I was expecting. I believe some language options existed earlier than this for my situation, but it was never a requirement until high school, and even then, a lot of students (around me/from my perspective) didn’t care about it all that much
High school requires at least a second language class to graduate, I believe. Most people take French as it’s the “default” one that all schools offer, but my school also had Spanish, Mandarin, and Japanese, iirc. But that was decades ago.
the new Global Language
This is not decided yet.
Russian is still a candidate. English still a possibility despite one large English-speaking country giving up all it’s meaning.
Yes my public high school had it as a language back in the late 1980s/early 90s.
Fair enough. Also thanks for not being one of the comments saying ‘they definitely exist in America how dare you’ 🙄 I could’ve worded it better but the goal of the post was to find edicational systems different than the one I personally went through, not to try to define all of America’s system in a few sentences. I put a fairly detailed description of that in one of my other replies if you’re curious but regardless, thanks for your time 🙂
My town was one of the wealthier in the USA at the time and had a substantial population of immigrants from Korea/Japan/Taiwan so it made sense as a third language offering for the kids who were going back to Asia.
A ton of American kids took it because their parents were in finance and pushed it.
My school (UK, 1980s) offered Mandarin as an extracurricular course. I signed up, showed up... and was the only student. One-on-one classes the rest of the year :)
(Just don't try grilling me in Mandarin now, though.)
Ireland. I doubt any schools offer it as a curricular, but it is an exam subject. Generally the only people sitting the exam are Chinese native speakers who moved here.
Fair enough. Thanks for the input buddy 😁
Not in my school anyway. The languages taught here in Austria vary by school AFAIK, in my school everyone had to learn English, then depending on which branch we selected we could learn French, Italian, Spanish and/or Latin (but there was no path to combine French with Italian).
I looked it up and while it is possible for schools to choose other languages than these, Chinese doesn’t seem to be among them, so that could not be made a mandatory subject, probably could be taught as a non-graded elective though.
Yeah, a lot of these comments seem to think I meant “Mandarin isn’t taught anywhere in the US” when really my point was that the particular schools I attended did not have it available. But that’s on me as OP. Thanks for your input 😁
There was a show on Nick Jr that taught me how to count to three in Chinese while my kids had snack time.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 3 days ago
I’m going to challenge you on this point. First of all, what’s Chinese? I’m guessing you refer to Putonghua aka Mandarin, the erstwhile variant of Beijingnese prescribed for official use within the PRC by their political leadership.
And second, how “global” is it? It’s useful primarily in one contiguous area of the world. Even there a large chunk of people kind of learn it as a first semi-foreign language because they speak something different at home. Cantonese, Shanghainese, or a language that cannot be written in Chinese characters.
Which brings me to my third point: a language that requires study of a script this idiosyncratic will not rise to a global language. Vietnam has gotten rid of hanzi, Korean pretty much as well. Ironically, the north has already completely abandoned it. By comparison, the Latin alphabet was spread by cavalry and cannon boat into all parts of the world for centuries. It spread so far that it is now used to teach pinyin to PRC schoolchildren. And while it is not without its own problems, the simplicity and adaptability of this phonetic alphabet to any language makes it far more useful than Chinese characters. And I’m not shitting on the cultural value of them: that’s unimpeachable. It’s just too complicated.
The alphabet spread with English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese all over the world. I’m not saying that’s a good thing but it’s already happened. Mandarin cannot have a similar success today unless the PRC starts colonizing at gunpoint fast.
Most Chinese as a foreign language speakers outside the PRC learned it for economic reasons. Economic ties have become somewhat dicey. If anything I suspect interest in learning Mandarin to wane.
There is also the tonal aspect. Any atonal-native language learner is going to have a much harder time than trying to remember the non-sensical English orthography.
More people on this planet learn English as their first and possibly only foreign language - if they learn one at all. The forum you asked this question on is in English. The internet cements the use of the alphabet.
I’m in Japan where foreign language education is notoriously sub-par overall. English is the first foreign language. Some private high schools offer Mandarin as an optional, I haven’t seen anything substantial in state-run schools. At college level, most people chose between French and German as a second foreign language. Like we’re still in the Meiji Era. I’m a big proponent that they abandon this tradition in favor of Russian, Korean, and Mandarin. It always helps to learn the language of your neighbors. Language schools advertize k-pop-trendy Korean more.
BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You’re grilling OP on something they already said they have little experience with. OP is asking questions to learn, and the grilling is detrimental to that.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 3 days ago
I’m criticizing the use of the phrase “new global language.” And I’ve laid out my reasons why I think that’s wrong. I didn’t think I was grilling OP, just the perception of Mandarin being the new global language. So I’m a little taken aback that you read it that way; that wasn’t my intention.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2 days ago
“challenge” (with an informative explanation) == “grill”
Thanks for clarifying which sort of internet user you are.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 days ago
It is the mistake that the AI made that generated this manipulative troll post.
GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’m surprised to see how many people are treating this post seriously.
It is super AI pilled.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Whoa whoa whoa, I’m no AI troll, I was just high when I made it 🤪