World

How likely is Mandarin to surpass English as the global lingua franca?

Virtually zero chance.

There are many reasons why English is the lingua franca today. It’s widespread around the world. The British Empire was pretty effective at spreading it till the middle of the 20th century, making it official language for a huge part of the world population. Since the fall of the empire an other English speaking country, the US has been carrying the flag with even more energy, spreading it even further with business, culture, hard and soft power. It’s a nice addition that English is a very easy language to learn for half of the world, definitely way easier than some other languages that previously rivaled English.

When we are looking at Mandarin it lacks just pretty much all the above drivers to become a global lingua franca. It’s limited to a very small number of countries that are all in Asia. It’s known language virtually only by ethnic Chinese people on other continents. Nobody else.

China itself isn’t a monolingual country either. While it’s the most spoken language but Mandarin actually is the lingua franca of the country.

Chinese is a famously tough language to learn. Not only the writing but also the tonality and the seemingly endless number of words that sound identical for the untrained ear.

While the Chinese economic power is very strong, the soft power isn’t exactly robust. Exceptionally rare to see anything from the Chinese popular culture to gain any attention globally. Can’t compete not only the American but even the British as far as global reach is concerned. And this doesn’t help the popularity of the language either.


Related Posts

Germany and Italy have asked for their central bank gold reserves stored in New York to be repatriated. What has the US response been?

So far, not much beyond Taco pitching a typical trumppler temper tantrum. He is livid that Germany and Italy want to remove nearly 250 BILLION dollars in gold…

Which US president was the closest to being a dictator?

28th President of the US, 34th Governor of New Jersey (who was a racist southerner from Virginia), 13th President of Princeton, a man who’s earliest memory was seeing…

Why is Alaska so much more populated than Canadian territories right next to it?

Alaska has two things going for it that Northern Canada does not. The first factor explains why Alaska has always supported a larger population than Northern Canada and…

Is Trump’s letter to Pelosi a sign that he might be in cognitive decline?

I think it is a sign that America is in decline. Can you imagine a founding father using that kind of language? Look at this sentence: “Even worse…

What would happen if Trump ordered the US army to invade Greenland?

Here is the TLDR: A total of 3 major things would happen Greenland is a territory of Denmark, which is a NATO ally; we all know this. If…

What will you do if J.D. Vance wins the 2028 presidential election?

There’s something off putting about Vance. I struggle to put my finger on it exactly. Mind that I’m a conservative Republican. In theory he should be my guy….

error: Content is protected !!