Will Mandarin be the language of future?

Seneca (Expat in China)

I don't think Chinese will become as widely spoken throughout the world as English currently is. It is too time-consuming to learn as a second language. A second language is taught from an age when the child has internalized his or her mother tongue. That means many precious years later than the child's first language. To learn Chinese you absolutely have to devote yourself to learning how to write and read it. If you have to learn it beside other subjects you can't get proficient at it early enough. There will be plenty of dropouts because such repetitive learning is likely to bore the pupils. But Chinese will become more popular, and that is a good thing.

German students learn Chinese calligraphy at a summer camp in Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui province, August 5, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]