Mandarin in today's world- The rise of Mandarin

http://www.taiwanese-secrets.com/facts-about-mandarin-chinese.html 

English, being lingua franca , has worldwide acknowledgment of its crucial role of the facilitator in communications among people from different countries. Despite English‘s high reputation, Mandarin recently rises to challenge its status. As the official language of China, Mandarin is widely in China. Among the varieties of Mandarin, the Beijing dialect is the most standard form. In the past, use of Mandarin is comparatively localized, which is prevalent mainly in China and some areas like Taiwan and Asian country like Singapore. Nowadays, learning Mandarin becomes a trend among the rest of the world. Considering the Mandarin craze, some scholars even predict that Mandarin will replace English‘s status as the lingua franca. 

Today, Mandarin is the dominant language of the administration, media, education, science technology and so on in both China and Taiwan, and it is also one of the four official languages in Singapore. . With reference to the survey done by Xinhua news agency, there are over 690 million Mandarin speakers within the boarder of China; there are at least 20 million in Taiwan and 1.5 million in Singapore. Not to mention those Chinese living in Indoesia, Thailand, Vietname and UK etc. According to the statistics provided by Ethnologue: Languages of the World, there are over 845 millions Mandarin speakers in the world. 

Rise of China 

In previous posts, it is said that whether a language can be a global language depends largely on the power of the country . In recent years, the rise of China has posed a threat to the status of English as a global language, as there is a chance that Mandarin will replace English's global status.
First of all, the Gloss Domestic Product (GDP) of China is US$9.872 billion and it ranks no.3 in the world in 2010. China's GDP just ranks behind the European Union and the U.S. In 2000, China's GDP is only 7.1% of the world's total. But in 2010, it has increased to 13.3 % and it is expected that it will account for 20.7 % of the world's GDP.

On top of that, China is the fastest-growing major economy in the world. it has an average growth rate of 10% for the past 30 years. 

Moreover, According to The Economists, the U.S. economy would be overtaken by China's in 2019. 

There are a lot more data showing that China is rising in terms of economics. We are not going to list out all of them today as our focus is how the rise of China brings the rise of global status of Mandarin

Recent trend of learning Mandarin over the world speaks well for this phenomenon. For the sake of acquire smooth cooperation with enterprises in China as to open up market in China, international enterprises usually require their staff have good command in Mandarin in order to facilitate developing their Chinese links. In Asian countries, proficient in Mandarin sometimes is a much for acquiring a job, especially for the tertiary sector like the tourism. While in western countries, knowing Mandarin is always an advantage in job application.

In acquiring a language, systematic and well organized training is needed. Owing to that, it is a common phenomenon to find Mandarin learning institutions are established over the world to provide Mandarin courses. Even some schools in the western countries like the US are encouraging their students to acquire Mandarin as a foreign language by providing regular courses.

References:

1.      M. Paul, Lewis (ed.).2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16th Edition). Tex.: SIL International.

2.      Omniglot - The online encyclopedia of writing systems & languages. http://www.omniglot.com/chinese/mandarin.htm

3.      CIA World Fact Book, accessed 2011

4.      Euromonitor International. “Top 10 largest economies in 2020”. July 7, 2010.

Edited by Ingrid, Denize and Uchi