lily85 于2014-12-16发布 l 已有人浏览
增大字体 减小字体


Clayton Dube is the head of the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. He praises Zuckerberg's effort and thinks more American CEOs should learn foreign languages.

"To speak Chinese means you begin to think as Chinese people do. You begin to understand how Chinese speakers have the world organized, how they perceive things. And that is a vital step if you're going to be culturally competent."

Zuckerberg's talk raises a larger question: is Chinese the language of the future? Could it replace English as the world's international language? Mandarin Chinese already has the most native speakers of any language. And, China may soon pass the United States as the world's largest economy.





"As China rises you can anticipate that more people will adopt the language. But is China going to replace English? I don't think so--certainly not in my lifetime, probably not in the next two, three, four generations."

English rose to prominence through the British Empire in the nineteenth century. American dominance in the twentieth century spread the language even further. Dube says American pop culture is one reason for English's popularity as a foreign language.

"American movies, music, television, video games have wide audiences...So far China's success in this realm has been very limited. Chinese films, Chinese television shows, Chinese music doesn't have a huge following outside of China."




"If you study German, if you study Spanish, if you study Russian, there are many languages where the "you" form and how you conjugate verbs is very different depending on whether you're talking to a grandparent or a boss versus one of your children or an employee or a close friend...If I'm talking to President Obama or if I'm talking to my closest friend or my son, its ‘you.'"




I'm Adam Brock.

 1 2 下一页