I've noticed something interesting.

La ĉinaj lingvoj havas 1,000,000,000 parolantojn, jes? La ĉina ŝtato pledas por Mandarino iĝi la 'norma' ĉina lingvo en la tuto de Ĉina. Kombinu tio kun la fakto kiu estas ke iu parolantoj de aliaj ĉinaj lingvoj povas kompreni Mandarinon, kaj post kombinu tio kun la fakto kiu estas ke Mandarino komencas preni la loko de la Angla lingvo de la 'preferita dua lingvo en la laborejo'.

The Chinese languages are spoken by about 1,000,000,000 people, right? Then, the Chinese government is pushing for Mandarin to become the 'standard' chinese throughout all of the PRC. Combine that with the fact that some speakers of other Chinese languages can understand Mandarin, and then further combine that with the fact that Mandarin is starting to take English's place of the 'preferred secondary language in the workplace'.

FURTHER combine that with the fact that Japan uses Chinese characters and chinese vocabulary (for about every native Japanese word there's a Chinese word, or so they say) and same for some speakers of Korean, and you've got one hellova speaker base. With such a far reaching and influential language, what would Esperanto's future be in Asia against a mighty beast like Chinese? Could Esperanto's future uses be limited to general use only in the 'Western' sphere of influnce?

And I decided to practice some Esperanto at this late time of night too, so sorry if it's incomprehensible. (but what is 'then' in Esperanto, as in 'then look here'?)

I doubt it, because the Japanese and Korean language are quite different from Chinese, so there is certainly a role for Esperanto there. It may just have to be written with Chinese ideograms...

I doubt, regarding after reading this point of view.

jan aleksan:I doubt, regarding after reading this point of view.

That's an eye-opener, but then, if we accept the author's impression that attempts to develop a Roman alphabet have not been successful, why don't Chinese speakers develop a phonetic alphabet for Chinese?

Miland:

jan aleksan:I doubt, regarding after reading this point of view.

That's an eye-opener, but then, if we accept the author's impression that attempts to develop a Roman alphabet have not been successful, why don't Chinese speakers develop a phonetic alphabet for Chinese?

The Korean system seems kinda brilliant to me.
Wonder if that`s the way to go.

Chinese has several phonetic alphabets; the bopomofo system used in Taiwan is one of them. These systems are only used for teaching purposes, and are not used to write standard Chinese (although bopomofo is apparently used to write a couple of native Taiwanese languages)

However, Chinese is full of homonyms. There are lots of characters that are pronounced exactly the same (same tones and all), but are written differently, so in writing it's easy to distinguish. This ability would be lost if it were to switch to an alphabetical system.

As a sidenote, there are a couple of wonderful Chinese fonts available online that have the Chinese character, and the pronunciation written on the side with bopomofo; I have not studied Chinese, but it seems to me that this would be an awesome learning tool for students, who could take an online text and copy and paste it into a word processor with this font, and suddenly see all of the pronunciations pop up.

Chinese has several phonetic alphabets; the bopomofo system used in Taiwan is one of them. These systems are only used for teaching purposes, and are not used to write standard Chinese (although bopomofo is apparently used to write a couple of native Taiwanese languages)

I'm a fan of the bopomofo, it's to bad China doesn't use it, but then again they butchered the Chinese script by simplifying it. Its a lot easier to fit the bopomofo beside the Chinese characters then to fit the pinyin (used in China) which takes a lot more room.

However, Chinese is full of homonyms. There are lots of characters that are pronounced exactly the same (same tones and all), but are written differently, so in writing it's easy to distinguish. This ability would be lost if it were to switch to an alphabetical system.

Very true, and i think this is why the Chinese probably will never adopt an alphabet (other then for learning), nor do i think they should, since it would be such a sad event in linguistic history (i kind of wish the Egyptians still used Hieroglyphs!).

a good example of the homonyms would be from this tone drill...
媽媽罵馬,馬罵媽媽. or māmamàmǎ,mǎmàmāma. meaning "Mother scold (at) horse, horse scolds (at) mom." Well at least these words all have different tones!

following is a list of words that have the ma sound and the 3 tone (ma3 or mǎ)...
嗎 morphine?(also used as ma, for a question ending)
馬 horse (very often used in names to)
碼 part of compound words usually to do with numbers
瑪 agate, also often used in foreign names
螞蟻 ant (mǎ yǐ)
perhaps i didn't pick the best example, but just think that is just one tone of ma. can u imagine reading ma(plus tone mark, and trying to figure out what it means?, most of the time you would know from context, but when the whole language is like this it can be confusing, then agian, we get by with spoken Chinese very well, so i guess that wouldn't be a huge problem, its just nice the depth that written Chinese gives a word.

although i speak mandarin, i'm prity iliterate in writen chinese, so i may have made some mistakes.

As a sidenote, there are a couple of wonderful Chinese fonts available online that have the Chinese character, and the pronunciation written on the side with bopomofo; I have not studied Chinese, but it seems to me that this would be an awesome learning tool for students, who could take an online text and copy and paste it into a word processor with this font, and suddenly see all of the pronunciations pop up.

as a fan and strong supporter of bopomofo, i would be very interested to know where to get those fonts, if you could link it. I'd be much obliged.

Some extra infromation about traditonal vrs simplified writeing (not that you asked for it, lol)

I find simplified writing quite ugly, but I'd have to give them that its so much easier to write simplified then traditional (but traditional is still nicer to read)
example: 愛, love in traditional becomes 爱 in Simplified, whats missing is the 心 (heart). So i say, the Communists took the heart out of love, lol.

and if anyone's interested, the best Chinese online dictionary I've found is...

http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=wor...

Saluton al cxiuj el Tajvano!

Thank be to >erinja for her wonderful explanation of phonetic alphabet used in Chinese. Indeed, earlier in 20th century there were some intellectuals who advocated to replace sinogram for a certain sort of Latinated phonetic alphabet symbol, saying it would be easier to reduce the illiteracy. The course of history however chose the other way.

To the two-part question asked by >ceigered,
I will answer Yes for the first part and No for the second.

Within the boundary of PRC, the Chinese government has the right to run over any obscure dialects or language of ethnic minority with their "official language".
So I will bet under such influence, soon you will have a 1.2b base of Chinese speaker...

In Asia, however, Chinese has to compete with other languages such as Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Though in the history these languages had the influence from China(Like certain words or writing system)
,in everyday language, there lies drastic difference. It's never like how English may understand French without studying it.

Furthermore, just for the same reason English can't dominate Europe for the time being, other nations can't possibly accept a national language like Chinese as the "Lingua Franca" in Asia.

As for the Korean writing system, I too consider it a superior way as phonetic symbol for Chinese since it maintains the "block" shape of Chinese character.
On the other hand, do we really need a new set of non-Latin character to write such an intrinsically semi-Latin language as Esperanto? Just so that it hopefully makes Asian people feel better? I don't actually see such necessity.
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Sorry for making it this long.
It has been a pleasure to talk with you about my own language!

ps. >Senlando
Thank you for supporting the traditional Chinese which I myself "love" with my whole "heart".
You may be glad to know Taiwanese scholars are trying to make traditional sinogram a Non-Material Cultural Heritage~

For a better example of homonyms in Chinese,
I recommend the prose written by linguist
趙元任(Juen Ren ĜAO):
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Ĝui~