>>Something basic must be going in the crapper in China.
Yeah...something basic like Chinese Culture. When you let foreigners push a foreign language into your own until your people use the new language without thinking, you have surrendered a part of your culture.
Good thing we don’t have any of that here!
I’m unaware of what the French did. Did they ban English in publications as well for the “purity” of the French langauge?
I wish America would do this with English. Heck we have Spanish everywhere. Good thing I can understand and speak it (not great) or I would have a heck of a time.
Didn’t work in France. The scientists, in particular, went nuts.
You echoed my sentiments, before I could get them out.
The billion$ that France has spent in the last century to promote and protect French has done nothing to slow the march of the international adoption of English.
If the Chinese were smart, they’d look at how English was “created” and realize it was not created by the Celts of Britain protecting “the native tongue”, or by the Angles (English) of Britain protecting “the native tongue”, or by the Saxons of Britain protecting “the native tongue”, or by the Normans of Britain protecting “the native tongue”.
The English of today is a creation of constant adaptation, constant incorporation of “foreign” words into the common language of those using “English”, throughout the history of the English language.
And, English continues that always-evolving aspect today, which will likely keep it expanding in usage world-wide.
The Chinese language will die, like French, if adopting foreign words into the Chinese language is somehow made prohibitive. For a language to survive, it MUST adapt and adaptation includes adding words that originate (start out) outside that language’s usual speakers. English is what it is BECAUSE it was built that way, over time.