300 million Chinese can't speak Mandarin, according to a professor in the Chinese Social Sciences Academy. Some targets have been put forward: by 2010 to popularise Mandarin and by 2050 for everyone to speak it.
According to a report in a Japanese magazine, Chinese language may become a key world language universally used (like English is today). Some Korean scholars recently have suggested that the speed of economic development in Korea is not fast enough and is partly attributed to an over-use of Korean words (instead of retaining Chinese characters). The President of the Japanese Kanji (character) Association said that there is no written language like Chinese - systematic and logical; and Chinese is the only language where you can deduce something about the meaning of the word by looking at the character, and where meaning transcends the many different dialects of Chinese.
Taiwan abandons plan to use Hanyu Pinyin
In our New Year Newsletter in February 2000, we reported on a decision in Taiwan to adopt the Mainland system of Romanising Chinese characters - Hanyu Pinyin (also the UN standard). Since the change of government, this decision has been reversed and we are going to be stuck with the lack of standardisation currently evident.
For some background about Chinese Language see Chinese Language - Please Explain.
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