On 6/14/06 3:22 AM, in article C0B6125B.26C1E%eschaal@max.hi-ho.ne.jp,
"Ernest Schaal" <eschaal@max.hi-ho.ne.jp> wrote:

> in article 1150278464.444449.300170@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com, Marc at
> Marc.Picco@googlemail.com wrote on 6/14/06 6:47 PM:
> 
>> 
>>> I was watching the Greek news recently and saw that the Greek and
>>> Jordanian government were having some sort of conference. They were
>>> communicating in English.
>>> 
>>> I can't imagine Chinese being used in this manner.
>> 
>> Yes, I agree. I think it will take some time before Chinese becomes an
>> ubiquitous language for the world. It won't happen overnight. But
>> already Chinese cinema is popular, and slowly more and more things
>> Chinese will appear. People will want to learn it at school and
>> universities. Speaking Chinese will become fashionable. Combine this
>> with economic power and I expect the language to become more and more
>> dominant.
>> 
>> But, who knows, perhaps the Big Red country won't be able to control
>> its inner tension and go up in flames this century, and then it won't
>> be Chinese but...who knows...Hindi...or Hindi-English?
> 
> I doubt if Chinese will the new universal language. Spanish has a better
> chance.
>> 
> 
  Why? The language spoken by the people with the most money and the most
great, big bombs stands the best chance of becoming universal. And while
Spanish speakers have many virtues, having more money or stronger armies
than the rest of the world hasn't been numbered among those virtues for many
a long year.
  The Chinese, on the other hand, recently displaced Japan as the world's
second largest economy. And gaining on You Know Who pretty fast. How's the
Chinese army doing, I wonder? I bet they have big bombs. They sure have a
lot of soldiers.
Yep, my money's on Mandarin.