From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Subject: Re: English SUCKS, Chinese is the only language you need!! Date: 1997/11/20 Message-ID: <650e6p$ahv$1@darla.visi.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 291221422 References: <34557f2b.1934172@news.mindspring.com> <3473723c.200248081@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <34737E7F.9D5@mWilden.com> <3475921d.208410468@nntp.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Nov 1997 22:27:05 CST Organization: Plethora Internet Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-11-19T22:27:05-06:00 List-Id: In article <3475921d.208410468@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, Michael Rubenstein wrote: >On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:04:15 -0800, Mark Wilden >>> According to the World Almanac there are almost twice as many speakers >>> of Mandarin (999 million) as of English (487 million). >It's from the 1997 Almanac (from Microsoft Bookshelf) and the figures >are for mid 1996. >These figures include non-native speaker. I have a hard time believing this one. Just about all of the U.S., most of Canada, all of the U.K., a third of Europe, and a large portion of Asia, speak English, at least as a second language. (The 'third of Europe' is from a recent article in The Economist.) Furthermore, I have a very hard time buying the number given for Mandarin; the Chinese I met living at a university *mostly* spoke Mandarin, but I'd say no more than half of the people we met who weren't studens or teachers did... Also, you have to look at the rate of growth; English has become a very popular technical and trade language, and (at least in the EU), younger people are much more likely to have a second language, and more than half of them learn English. English has a wide variety of consonant clusters, and happily adopts words from nearly any other language; this has been a great strength for it. If this gets any more off topic, I shall expect to be clobbered by the Narn Bat Squad. -s -- seebs@plethora.net -- I am not speaking for my employer. Copyright '97 All rights reserved. This was not sent by my cat. C and Unix wizard - send mail for help, or send money for a consultation. Visit my new ISP --- More Net, Less Spam! Plethora . Net