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1. English
2. Arabic
3. Mandarin-Cantonese
4. Hindi-Urdu
English is the defacto lingua franca of the world.
English will be the dominating language in years to see.
However, Chinese will be increasingly important, too. One reason is most Chinese cannot speak English at all. Even college graduates can hardly carry a conversation in English.
^Chinese will never have the regional, nevermind global, importance that English does. It doesn't matter if the majority of Chinese know English or not. In the big scheme of things, it really doesn't matter if the guy/gal making your iPhone or harvesting rice knows English or not. I'd be willing to wager that the Chinese elite either have a descent grasp of English or are damn well making sure their kids have a solid command of it.
Interestingly, there was a report on TV recently where they said a lot of Chinese are learning Portuguese, courses are all booked out and the Chinese are paying a lot to lure Portuguese teachers over there. No idea why, maybe because of Brazil or Lusophone African countries
Interestingly, there was a report on TV recently where they said a lot of Chinese are learning Portuguese, courses are all booked out and the Chinese are paying a lot to lure Portuguese teachers over there. No idea why, maybe because of Brazil or Lusophone African countries
Strange... I wonder how well they are going to be able to learn Portuguese, grammar is very hard plus the pronunciation.
Where are the language schools that teach Portuguese ? Do they have it in Shezhen too ? Been looking for it but I can't find Portuguese course here.
I was surprised as well to hear that.
No idea about those courses, I don't speak any Chinese language, one probably has to google those courses in Mandarin or some other local Chinese language. I suppose those courses are mainly offered by universities, colleges, the Instituto Camões, etc. And internally by companies that send employees abroad.
Believe it or not, speakers of two of the languages at the bottom of most people list here, Spanish and Portuguese, are increasingly sought after in the export-oriented East and South East Asian countries. This is due to the increasingly important Asia-Latin America bilateral trades.
How would you rank the next 20 languages from most to least important in ASIA?
Arabic
Bengali
Cantonese
English
French
Hindi
Japanese
Korean
Mandarin
Malay
Persian
Portuguese
Punjabi
Russian
Spanish
Tagalog
Tamil
Thai
Turkish
Vietnamese
I think Japanese is the most important language in asia.....
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