East Meets West: The New Generation of Students

[Ericpoke]

So a lot of Asian students (Oriental side) come to the US to study but have been going back after getting their education, etc. This includes students from various common genres of today's workforce (Hospitality, Business, etc). In fact this was one of the sole reasons why South Korea today is such an amazing developed country.

Now the same signs are occurring in Hong Kong, parts of China (Other than Shanghai, etc) and even countries like Taiwan. More Westerners are now learning Korean and especially Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) than ever before.

It use to be that people wanted to learn English as it was considered the language of "success", it that not going to be the case in the next 30 years? I sense a shift.

 

[fresh_42]

So a lot of Asian students (Oriental side) come to the US to study but have been going back after getting their education, etc. This includes students from various common genres of today's workforce (Hospitality, Business, etc). In fact this was one of the sole reasons why South Korea today is such an amazing developed country.

Now the same signs are occurring in Hong Kong, parts of China (Other than Shanghai, etc) and even countries like Taiwan. More Westerners are now learning Korean and especially Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) than ever before.

It use to be that people wanted to learn English as it was considered the language of "success", it that not going to be the case in the next 30 years? I sense a shift.

What do you want to say?

As markets with growth rates over so many years as the Asian markets, there is certainly an economic pressure to get involved. This might partially require to learn those languages.

As far as science is concerned: the "common" language, at least in the main fields we debate here, has always changed throughout history: Greek, Arabic, Latin, French, German, and now English. I think English won't lose this position any time soon, simply because it is so easy to learn - at least to the level needed to communicate in STEM areas, I do not talk about literature. Additionally it uses a quite simple alphabet compared to many Asian languages.

Thus we will have to distinguish economic requirements and scientific standards. The former will probably lead to more people learning, say Mandarin, but I do not expect the international language of STEM conferences (and probably more than just STEM) to change anytime soon.

 

[Ericpoke]

Thanks for your response @fresh_42 - Mostly agree but due to the lack of violence in East Asian countries (As compared to North America and Western countries), I feel this region will start to dominate global issues fairly shortly. I just feel the West shouldn't be sleeping on what's going on there like we have been. Or it will hurt us where it counts . . . economically.