Challenge: Have English be more prominent as a language in mainland China

quite difficult ... you'd probably have to have a 'free-for-all' war between several factions for the throne as the emperor, going on for decades without any one faction getting the upper hand, at just about the time where Britain start to have enough technological naval ability to project power there.

And even then i'm not sure it would reach that far inland, but rather splintering the western most china into independent nations of turkishs semi-nomadic people.
 
Title^^ I think possibly somewhere around the colonial age could be the start of a POD(s).

An interesting PoD could be for Southern Chinese nationalism/localism to become much more prominent than OTL. Even today (especially today, even) there is a tremendous amount of Cantonese regionalism that shows itself whenever the populace in Guangzhou/Hong Kong suspects a CCP 'crackdown' on the language. There's also some Minnanese and Hokkienese nationalism going on.

Back to the PoD. So with powerful Southern Chinese nationalist movements that aren't afraid to resort to violence against Northern 'transgressions', it would become very difficult for any central government to impose a 'national Chinese language', since Mandarin would provoke Southern revolt while Cantonese/Wu/other dialects are just not as widely spoken elsewhere. So maybe some visionary politician solves the problem by 'importing' English into the country as a way of solving the language problem.
 
Trouble is, there is no strong government *to* impose a national language, and thus cause hypothetical resentment. It's circular logic.

IOTL, Mao personally favoured replacing Chinese characters entirely with Pinyin. It failed, not least due to resistance within his own party.

So if someone as strong and cunning as Mao is unable to merely change the writing script of the Chinese language (an idea which had been seriously debated among even nationalist intellectuals for decades), it will be impossible for a single politician to succeed at imposing an entirely foreign language.

What if a Nazi-style regime comes to power in the US, which also develops a massive nuclear arsenal with the intention of racially cleansing the entire world of non-Aryans? The surviving population of China (and everywhere else) will be taught just enough English to obey their new Aryan masters.
 
South Korea has a very strong desire to learn English amongst its population. That still doesn't mean Koreans go around speaking English.

It took the Philippines several centuries to make a language at least heavily influenced by an European language. Not even they always speak Spanish or English.

It was possible for both Singapore and Hong Kong to have a large group of proficient English speakers simply because they were small city-states.

Maybe Malaysia is applicable- but I wouldn't think China can simply be annexed and colonised like the Malayan peninsula.
 
Impossible. This belongs to the ASB section.

Why not have Chinese become the national language of UK then !?
 
The way things are going, that may be a possibility. But Chinese is very difficult to speak and even more difficult to write, even for Chinese people.

Perhaps if after the Opium Wars the British had taken more extensive concessions and established schools. I see no way China could be colonized without swallowing the invaders as it always has but then the British were able to accomplish this in India. If in India, why not China?
 
Impossible. This belongs to the ASB section.

Why not have Chinese become the national language of UK then !?

All it said is "more prominent" that's easy for a POD have some random guy decides to take English classes and now English is slightly more prominent :)

If China gets richer faster it shouldn't be too hard to get China obsessed with English education in the same way that South Korea is. Won't mean THAT much English but will mean lots of people with basic proficiency.
 

scholar

Banned
Maybe I am not reading the OP right, because if he just wants English to be more widely spoken that is fairly easy to do.

Looks like someone beat me to the punch.
 
All it said is "more prominent" that's easy for a POD have some random guy decides to take English classes and now English is slightly more prominent :)

If China gets richer faster it shouldn't be too hard to get China obsessed with English education in the same way that South Korea is. Won't mean THAT much English but will mean lots of people with basic proficiency.

Call me cynical; it does sound to me that "more prominent" means something which is more like at least the 2nd or 3rd national language of China.

I don't know whose country OP in but I also want to ask the same question to him as in Chinese becomes "more prominent" in OP's own country.
 
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The way things are going, that may be a possibility. But Chinese is very difficult to speak and even more difficult to write, even for Chinese people.

Perhaps if after the Opium Wars the British had taken more extensive concessions and established schools. I see no way China could be colonized without swallowing the invaders as it always has but then the British were able to accomplish this in India. If in India, why not China?

India does not have a common script to unify (at the very least) most if not all of its languages.

If India has a common script, I have doubt that the British will be as successful in OTL in colonizing India and English will not be one of India's national language.

China has a common script to do so.

I agree with you that there is no way China could be fully colonized without swallowing the invaders though.
 
The way things are going, that may be a possibility. But Chinese is very difficult to speak and even more difficult to write, even for Chinese people.

As difficult as irregardless, uninevitable, recieve, could of, to/too/two, comiittee, etc. mostly the same old rant about "youngsters these days..."

And as EternalCynic pointed out, even the Mao who pushed through GLF and CR had problems getting support to further simplify the language.
 
As difficult as irregardless, uninevitable, recieve, could of, to/too/two, comiittee, etc. mostly the same old rant about "youngsters these days..."

And as EternalCynic pointed out, even the Mao who pushed through GLF and CR had problems getting support to further simplify the language.

I see your point. I mean, if you born and raised in a Chinese community, then write and speak Chinese would seem no problem for you. So there seems no need to "change" the whole language, even simplifing them, which was done IOTL, will be a bit unnecessary in my opinion, just a bit.

And on the PoD, how about had the Southern Ming survive longer, the China remain divided till mid 19th C., meanwhile the East India Company failed to colonize India, and their eyes looked to China, which have the Ming fell in civil war, and the Qing reigned by an emperor more incompetent than Daoguang; and then EIC supported some warlords in Ming to fight the others, using Divide and Conquer they finally brought South China under its heel; then the Qing, backward and corrupted, also got subjugated by EIC, who were attracted by their coal and iron deposits. Then the Chinese would eventually spoke English as their second, or even first, language. So, in short, had the fate of India and China during the 19th C. swapped.
 
Very interesting.

I was thinking more of a mid-1800s and with more imperialism by the US in the Pacific and British pressure by the EIC, a backwards China led by a series of bad emperors... They would be forced to modernize under an American/Anglo watch, and begin trade like Meiji Japan... Except more... Aggressively on the European/American side.

Like the OP said. Only making English more prominent, it would definitely be more prominent after such events.
 
If China effectively splits apart in mid 1800s as a result of the Taiping Rebellion, southern China might become part of a British sphere of influence opening it up to British economic interests. We then might see an East India Company scenario or even outright colonization. A 50-100 year era of British colonialism (in some form) might make English language as widespread in southern China as it is in Hong Kong.

Area of English use would probably be limited to the coastal areas and Pearl River as a "natural area" for British seapower. This would include provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and possibly Yunnan. These are generally areas where non-Mandarin dialect (Hakka, Min, Cantonese) is spoken or ethnic minorities. English might be an acceptable lingua franca as it was in India.

If the British made an effort to expand their zone of control and build railroads, they might make it to dominate Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi and thus the central Yangtze, but I think English is less likely to "take root".
 
Impossible. This belongs to the ASB section.

Why not have Chinese become the national language of UK then !?

It is not ASB. Original Poster said English be "more prominent" on the mainland. That is not the same as "replace Mandarin."

I assume the OP means a situation like in India where people still speak their local language and even Hindi, but English is nevertheless widespread.
 
There’s nothing impossible about it in any respect.



I don’t think you understand the scenario.

Then it's not impossible to have the similar reverse situation applied in your country then; Chinese becomes a "more prominent" - make it at least a second national language in YOUR COUNTRY.

You're the one who don't understand other people's feeling to the original question.

A typical mentality of "I say whatever I want; other people? I don't care about other people's feeling".

I have already mentioned before that it does sound to me that "more prominent" means something which is more like at least the 2nd or 3rd national language of China.
 
It's ASB and it does sound as a "naughty" question to make other people angry.

I really think you're over-reacting. Nowhere has the OP said anything about having Britain having to colonise China to accomplish the target. And even if they did, so what? There's nothing wrong per se with an "AHC: Britain colonises China" thread. Suggesting that such colonialism should have happened, or that it would have been better for China, would be a whole other matter, but not simply posing the challenge.

Why don't you answer my question : Why not have Chinese become the national language of your country then !? No need to become 1st but you can make it as 2nd or 3rd.

Go right ahead and pose such a challenge, if you like. No-one's stopping you.

How do you feel about it then ? Are you going to feel happy !?

Why in the world would someone be unhappy about that? In fact, it sounds like it would make an interesting challenge. There's nothing wrong with posting such a topic. The only thing wrong would be suggesting that such an event would be better for the UK (or other country of choice).
 
Then it's not impossible to have the similar reverse situation applied in your country then; Chinese becomes a "more prominent" - make it at least a second national language in YOUR COUNTRY.

You're the one who don't understand other people's feeling to the original question.

A typical mentality of "I say whatever I want; other people? I don't care about other people's feeling".

I have already mentioned before that it does sound to me that "more prominent" means something which is more like at least the 2nd or 3rd national language of China.

(Is Chinese myself)

I do agree that the board's Euro-centrism is an issue sometimes (e.g. there was a wave of challenges a few months ago asking for various European colonies such as Rhodesia and Egypt to become majority white, with the implicit expectation of mass ethnic cleansing or genocide in the 'solution'.) But this seems more reasonable as a challenge to me.

It's also not entirely out of question that English is more prominent as a language in mainland China without a nasty brutal colonial era or whatnot. For instance, an earlier modernization push with more odd/wonky ideas (I believe IOTL there was a movement to completely romanize the language, prompting 赵元任 to write 施氏食狮史 in response) could see a much larger push to teach western languages for trade/diplomatic/etc. purposes.
 
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