"we should all be learning Chinese..." thus they say

In a recent Facebook posting, I read

I keep coming across the same opinion, something along the lines of "we should all be learning Chinese, they're going to take over the world, etc etc..."

I, personally, think it's a pile of rubbish,...

To that, I responded (with slight modification here):

Whoever said "we should all be learning Chinese, they're going to take over the world" is very wrong. I'm a native speaker. This kind of claim occasionally appears on Chinese forums, just to create a few hours' laughs and sneers. Seriously, I can think of two reasons to refute this claim, other than a well-known one, i.e. China is still far behind in innovation in everything: the current practice of the Chinese government in promoting the Chinese culture has too many flaws; the Chinese is a difficult language. The first problem may be largely solved when the element of ideology goes away, which will happen eventually, probably sooner than most people have expected. The second problem remains as is. In spite of certain individuals' language talent, there's indisputable statistics to prove that Chinese, Arabic, etc are the hardest among popular languages for an English speaker. See How hard is Chinese?. (I already emailed and asked, Defense Language Institute will not have a web page hosting that frequently referenced content even though it belongs to them.) If a language is difficult for most people of the world, it's unlikely to become a dominant language. The success of English in this regard is not just due to the coincidence of the UK and then the US being advanced in most areas of technology and their mother tongue being English, but also because English takes less time to learn for non-English speakers than do many other languages (largely due to replacement of case systems and gender, the rarely useful features in modern languages, by word order, prepositions etc). People in the 21st century are just too busy to learn a language in order to conduct normal business. Unless the Chinese language magically becomes simple, it won't take over the world.

Off-topic: Joke: Recruiting

A joke found on the Internet. (Two lines omitted from the original.)

某公司招聘，好多人打来电话说保安不让进，希望派人接一下。考官说如果你连保安都对付不了，还是别来了。

最后翻墙进来的成海外市场专员；
讲理进来的成了研发工程师；
软磨硬泡进来的成了客服经理；
硬打进来的，顶替了保安。

做出结果才是价值。同样的困难，你遇到了只是退缩，而别人一直在找方法！

Translation:

A company is recruiting. Lots of people call in saying the security guard stops them at the entrance and they expect somebody to come out to usher them in. The recruiting officer says, if you can't even deal with the security guard, you don't need to come.

In the end, the one climbing over the wall to get in becomes the overseas market specialist.
The one getting in after reasoning with the guard becomes an R&D engineer.
The one who coaxes and pesters to get in becomes a customer service manager.
The one fighting himself in replaces the security guard.

Value lies in the result. In front of the same obstacle, you chicken out, while others look for a way out.

____________
[note] "翻墙" literally means "climb over the wall". But it also refers to the action of circumventing the Great Chinese Firewall to reach the Internet outside of China.

"He" (他) and "she" (她) mix-up for Chinese students

It's a known fact that a Chinese student learning English tends to mix up "he" and "she" in speaking, with "he" said more than "she" by mistake (subconscious male chauvinism?). A reasonable explanation is that "he" and "she" are pronounced exactly the same in Chinese, tā, even though their written forms differ.

Now I find evidence that could support this theory, however self-explanatory it already is. In the Facebook Polyglots group, a Finnish man writes:

"I have wanted to raise my children to be polyglots. But, I have found it challenging to teach them two languages. I've spoken English to all of my three sons from day one. They all speak English, but have trouble remembering basic words and make beginner mistakes. Just today, when I called my eldest son and asked: 'Are you home already? Is your mother there?' My 13-year-old, with whom I've spoken English every day of his life, says: 'He's home. I think he's upstairs.' With unconcealed frustration, I said: 'She, not he.' 'Oh! Sorry, I forgot'."

What a pleasure in finding other people making the same mistake! Seriously, this gentleman's children can speak a little of multiple Romance languages, attesting to their language capabilities. And yet a mistake is made because "he" and "she" are the same word in Finnish, hän, not just the same in pronunciation, but also in spelling, a stronger case than in Chinese we may say. In fact, the same can happen in a few other languages. I remember a polyglot friend of mine told me his Armenian friends sometimes make this mistake too. In Armenian, again, one word, նա, can mean both "he" and "she".

To permanently solve the problem, you have to think in the language you speak, English in this case. If the thinking process is in Chinese, Finnish or Armenian, and speaking is after a translation, possibly a very fast or nearly subconscious one, the risk of making this mistake still exists. But before achieving the level of thinking in English, the best the student can do is speak slowly.