如果中国崛起为超级大国，中文能取代英语成为通用语吗

If the rise of China (the PRC becomes a hyperpower) occurred, can Mandarin replace English as the lingua franca?

如果中国崛起为超级大国，中文能取代英语成为通用语吗?

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Tom Graves

What are the chances of Mandarin replacing English as the lingua franca in international communication? Why or why not?

There is only a very small chance that Mandarin will replace English as the lingua franca in international communication, because the writing system with Chinese characters is not easy to learn, whereas, in spite of the obtuse method of spelling with the English language, there are only 26 letters and no diacritics.

Plus English is already well established in India, parts of Africa, and North America. And English is also the most learned 2nd language. Most of the academic literature is now published in English. It would take an extraordinary set of circumstance for Mandarin to supersede English at this point in history.

中文取代英语成为国际通用语的可能性有多大？

中文在国际交流中取代英语成为通用语的可能性很小，因为汉字的书写系统很难学习，而英语只有26个字母，没有声调符号。

另外，英语在印度、非洲部分地区和北美都很普及。英语也是学习人数最多的第二语言。现在大多数学术文献都是用英文出版的。中文想要取代英语，需要一种特殊的环境。

Susanna Viljanen

Is the jury still out on whether Mandarin Chinese is the only language in the world that can directly compete with English as an international lingua franca? How would you position Chinese in terms of its global usefulness? Still bigger than Spanish?

The problem with Mandarin is that a) it is monosyllabic b) it is tonal and c) it is written in Hanzi. To learn Mandarin, you have to either start in a very early age or study really, really, hard.

中文是否是世界上唯一可以直接与英语竞争的国际通用语，目前还没有定论吗？你如何定位中文的全球用途？现在还比西班牙语用处大吗？

中文的问题在于

a) 它是单音节的

b) 它有声调

c) 它是用汉字书写的。

要学习中文，你要么很小就得开始，要么得非常非常努力。

English is a goddamn bad language for the international lingua franca, but it happened that Britain has had the largest empire in the world and USA won the World War Two, so we have to deal with it.

Personally, I would still prefer Latin as it was the international lingua franca in Europe all the way up to the 17th century, and all the Romance languages, which stem from Latin, are mutually comprehensible to some extent. Another good candidate would be Sanskrit, as most of the languages spoken in India are derived from it, and Farsi and Sanskrit are related to each other.

作为国际通用语，英语是一种十分糟糕的语言，只是碰巧历史上英国曾经是全球最大帝国，美国打赢了第二次世界大战，所以我们只能跟英语周旋。

就我个人而言，我还是更喜欢拉丁语，因为一直到17世纪，拉丁语都是欧洲的国际通用语，而且所有起源于拉丁语的罗曼语系在某种程度上都是可以相互理解的。

梵语也很有希望，因为印度使用的大多数语言都源自梵语，而波斯语和梵语关系紧密。

Thomas de La Marnierre

Why is English considered a global Lingua Franca when Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people in the world?

It does not matter that there are more Mandarin native speakers if those speakers are geographically concentrated and if few people are learning it as a second language.

为什么英语被作为全球通用语，而中文的使用人数更多？

如果说中文的人在地理上十分集中，如果很少有人把中文作为第二语言来学习，那么说中文的人再多也无关紧要。

By definition, a lingua franca is a language used as a medium of exchange. It implies that people are learning it. Mandarin does fill that role whithin the Middle Kingdom/Zhongguo between many ethnic groups that speak many different languages, for example. However, globally, languages like English, French, Castillian, Portuguese, Russian have more geographic dispersion. There are even laws to restrain the use of Russian in the Baltic states as it was seen as a menace to their languages.

根据定义，通用语是一种可以作为交换媒介的语言，这意味着人们都在学习这种语言。例如，在使用不同语言的许多民族之间，中文普通话确实就扮演着这个角色。

但在全球范围内，英语、法语、卡斯蒂利亚语、葡萄牙语、俄语等语言的地理分布更广。波罗的海国家甚至出台法律限制俄语的使用，因为他们认为俄语对他们自己的语言造成了威胁。

Michael Moszczynski

Citizen of the World: Will a language ever replace English as the lingua franca?

It will be replaced - but there's no reason to think it'll be based on current geopolitical trends. It might be some language that doesn't even exst yet, from many linguistic communities coming together over the next couple centuries. If you'd asked a person if Latin would ever be supplanted as the language of academia, they'd have told you definitely not! Similarly, if you'd told a Chinese scholar of the late nineteenth century that all academic output would be in vernacular Chinese, not Classical, they'd have thought it completely absurd.

世界公民：会不会有某种语言能取代英语，成为新的通用语？

英语早晚会被取代—但我们没有理由认为这种情况会基于当前的地缘政治走势。

新的通用语可能是一些目前尚未出现的语言，可能会由许多语言社区在接下来的几个世纪里交汇产生。

如果你问，拉丁语作为学术语言的地位是否会被取代，他们会告诉你绝对不会！

同样，如果你告诉一位19世纪末的中国学者，所有的学术成果都要用白话文呈现，不能用文言文，他们也会认为这个说话太过荒谬。

Right now, we're probably in a period of regional consolidation, and of regional lingua francas (the pedant in me really wants to say linguae francae). Swahili might emerge in the next decades as a unifying language of the African internet for example, though educated elites in the relevant countries favour English. There's an emergent Arabic standard based on dialects coming out in the forums and chatrooms that's very unlike the Modern Standard you hear in the media.

现在，我们可能正处于一个地区整合的时期，也是一个出现地区通用语言的时期。例如，斯瓦希里语可能会在未来几十年成为非洲互联网的统一语言，尽管受过教育的非洲精英们更喜欢英语。论坛和聊天室中也出现了一种基于方言的新兴标准阿拉伯语。

Mandarin is a popular answer, but who knows whether it will just assimilate into the broader current English consensus - most Chinese diplomats and workers in, say, Africa, use English to communicate. Nothing threatens English in the short term. But we know from history that all cultures see their suns set - and see their languages change in ways they could never have imagined. We won't live to see it, but one day, if humanity can make it that far, they'll study our language as a historical curiosity, the common tongue of a once-dominant culture.

很多人认为中文会成为新的通用语，但谁知道中文能不能得到更广泛的共识—比如，大多数在非洲的中国外交官和工作人员都能使用英语交流。短期内没有什么因素能威胁到英语的地位。但是我们从历史中知道，所有的文化都会盛极而衰。我们有生之年可能看不到这种改变。

Nathan James

If China wanted to make Mandarin overtake English as the world lingua franca, what should it do?

There is no reason for China to make Mandarin the lingua franca. Other countries may choose to learn Mandarin in order to facilitate trade and commerce (a wise move), but that’s entirely optional.

如果中国想让中文取代英语成为世界通用语，应该怎么做？

中国没有理由让中文成为通用语。其他国家可能会学习中文来促进贸易和商业(这绝对是明智的)，但这完全是可有可无的。

The world does not choose a lingua franca. The choice is entirely organic, the natural consequence of a country’s growing economic dominance. Such was the case with Great Britain and America.

As China grows into the world’s dominant economic power, I expect that same organic development to occur. But I wouldn’t be surprised if English remained the lingua franca — most everybody, including the Chinese, already know some English.

世界不会只选择一种通用语。这种选择完全是自然产生的，是一个国家日益增长的经济主导地位的自然结果。英国和美国的情况就是这样。

伴随着中国崛起为全球经济大国，我认为中文也会有类似的发展。但如果英语仍然是通用语，我也不会感到惊讶—毕竟大多数人，包括中国人，都已经多少学了点英语了。

Paul Denlinger

When China finishes overtaking US as the leading economic power, will Mandarin replace English as a lingua franca? Or is it too hard to learn by foreigners, and we'll see the resurgence of Esperanto or other constructed, easy to learn languages?

Yes, it already is replacing English in many parts of Southeast Asia.

I expect it to replace English in Russia and the nations of Central Asia and Middle East, and it will be even with English in central and eastern Europe.

当中国超越美国成为头号经济大国时，中文会取代英语成为通用语吗？对外国人来说，中文还是太难学了，我们会看到世界语或其他语言的复兴吗？

是的，在东南亚的许多地方，中文已经取代英语了。

我认为中文会在俄罗斯、中亚和中东的国家取代英语，在中欧和东欧国家可以和英语分庭抗礼。

English will remain strong in western Europe, but will lose ground in south and central America and Africa to Mandarin(spoken) and Chinese(written).

These divisions will be largely driven by politics because the world is swiftly changing to pro-US and pro-China blocs. Much of the interest in learning Chinese is in learning about Chinese politics and the Chinese worldview, which is very different from and is in strong contrast to the US/western worldview.

People will adopt the worldview they are most sympathetic with, and this will drive whether they want to learn Chinese or English.

英语会继续在西欧国家保持强势地位，但在中南美洲和非洲，英语会败给中文(口语)和汉字(书面语)。

这些分歧在很大程度上会由政治局势驱动，这个世界正迅速转变为亲美和亲华的阵营。学习中文的兴趣很大程度上是为了了解中国的政治和中国的世界观，中国的世界观和美国/西方的世界观非常不同，形成了强烈的对比。

人们会接受他们最为认同的世界观，并决定学中文还是学英语。

Daniel Ross

When another country, such as India or China, replace the U.S. as global superpower, will English remain the Lingua Franca and language of business, or will it be isolated to the countries that speak it and Mandarin Chinese or Hindi will become L.F.?

English is the first global lingua franca. That’s a more stable position than any previous lingua franca. And today, English is used by many more non-native speakers than native speakers, including business and government interaction between non-English speaking countries.

Although things could eventually change, I think it will take a lot to displace English. It’s in place. And it’s used internationally.

当另一个国家，比如印度或中国，取代美国成为全球超级大国时，英语能否继续作为通用语言和商业语言，英语会不会被仅限于英语国家，而中文或印地语则变成主流语言？

英语是第一个全球通用语。英语比历史上任何通用语言都拥有更为稳定的地位。如今使用英语的非英语母语者比英语母语者都要多得多，非英语国家中也使用英语来进行商贸活动和政府交流。

虽然这种情况未来可能会改变，但我认为其他语言想要取代英语还需要很长时间。英语已经在世界各地普及了。

George Regnery

Do you think that Mandarin will replace English as the Lingua Franca of the world?

No. After childhood, Mandarin is very difficult to learn for anyone outside that language family. It uses a series of tones, and the characters are difficult to learn.

English uses a 26 letter alphabet that is familiar to many people scattered around the globe. English is relatively easy to learn the basics. Chinese is not. English shares a significant vocabulary with Germanic and Romance languages, which cover a significant portion of the globe (all of North and South America, most of western Europe, and large chunks of Africa). English is also fairly dispersed worldwide.

你认为中文会取代英语成为世界通用语吗？

不可能。成人后，中文对于非母语人士而言是很非常难学的。中文有一系列声调，汉字也很难识记。

英语使用26个字母的字母表，世界各地的许多人都很熟悉。英语的基础相对简单易学。但中文一点也不简单。英语与日耳曼语和罗曼语有很多共同的词汇，这些语言的使用人群覆盖了全球的大部分地区(北美和南美的全部地区，西欧的大部分地区，以及非洲的大部分地区)。英语在世界范围内的应用范围也相当分散。

Bill Chen

No.

Chinese is the written root of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. All three borrowed the mono-syllabic Chinese script and used it in parallel with the spoken multisyllabic local tongue. Vietnam, in particular, persisted with the Chinese script into the 20th century.

Yet all three societies decided the Chinese script demanded too much of the user. One had to learn Chinese history, culture, philosophy, literature and the sciences in order to wield the Chinese language fluently.

不。

汉字是日本、朝鲜和越南文字的根源。这三种语言都借用了单音节的汉字，并与多音节的当地语言并行使用。尤其是越南，20世纪仍坚持使用汉字。

但这三个国家都认为，汉字对使用者的要求太高了。一个人必须学习中国的历史、文化、哲学、文学和科学，才有可能流利地使用汉语。

In effect, wielding the Chinese written word is the essence of being Chinese, and the KJV peoples didn’t want the educated populace to turn into half-Chinese citizens. They all adapted Chinese block writing. Korea spelled sounds with blocks, Japan appropriated a hanzi subset and liberally adopted a new set of logic and meaning, while Vietnam developed their own pinyin on steroids, resulting in a mostly monosyllabic script.

It will be the same calculus today, and into the future. English is a lingua franca the world over precisely because one doesn’t have to know much about Britain or the United States in order to wield it.

日本、朝鲜和越南都不希望受过教育的民众变成半个中国公民。他们调整了中国的楷书。朝鲜用笔画积木拼写发音，日本借用了汉字子集，并赋予了一套新的逻辑和含义，而越南则大力发展了自己的拼音。

现在和未来都会是一样的。英语之所以是全世界的通用语，正是因为人们不需要对英国或美国有过多了解就能使用这门语言。