Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and abandon languages

Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by cm2187 on Monday May 16, 2016 @03:44AM (#11704853)

But again, what language? We are not talking about computer languages. This is not a theoretical exercise in an ideal software world where you can start all over again. It's going to be one of the mainstream languages. Which one? Russian? Chinese?

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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by fighting on Monday May 16, 2016 @04:12AM (#11704939)

Yes, currently Chinese is the main alternative with the most population and has some of the features I mentioned. It is also great for business with many people learning it to attract some of the chinese money floating around and lots of foreigners there to make their fortunes. But just a couple of decades ago it was russian. A major war between the US and China and it might be Hindi next. Never safe to predict the future.

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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by douche on Monday May 16, 2016 @08:04AM (#11705751)

Chinese has a really awful written form, as far as being something that people can learn to read and write in a short amount of time.

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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by seanmcdirmid on Monday May 16, 2016 @04:13AM (#11704946)

And before that Japanese.

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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by cm2187 on Monday May 16, 2016 @06:25AM (#11705395)

I can safely predict that Chinese will not be used as the common language for Europe...

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