Korean Job Discussion Forums

[young_clinton]

[ttompatz]

[tukmax]

The worst of the USA economic downturn is ahead of us, not behind us.

I think we're going to see a lot more 'Little America' villages popping up around Asia, similar to little Italy and China towns in the US. Particularly in China. You'll see Chinese who will go to little America with their kids to get pizza. "Eat all your food kids; there are starving kids in America."

I also think another long term trend will see a lot more Asian-Americans returning to their ancestral homelands as the wages rise there and the opportunities in America go down. They have the advantage of being Western educated and bi-lingual. This will be bad for America long-term as Asian-Americans have been some of the most prosperous immigrants to America in the long term. I've noticed that the level of pride amongst Asian-Americans/Canadians has been increasing in recent years (and with good reason). Plus, they are the one group of immigrants that seems to resent not being accepted as 'true Americans' the most from my experience. Plus, a lot have told me that they are Chinese, Korean, or (insert ethnicity here) first, and don't really feel American or Canadian, even if they have lived there their whole life.

A lot of people talk about how the Chinese language could become the main form of ESL in the world to come, however, I don't think it will replace English anytime soon. Yes, it is true that twice as many people speak Mandarin Chinese as English on a daily basis, and that by 2040 or so there will be as many Hindi, Arabic (and some other Indian languages) spoken as English, BUT, the real key is that most of those languages are spoken by a concentrated, homogenous group of people, whereas English is spread out across the globe.
Young, mostly liberal minded, white, college educated types will take to learning Chinese, because that is what we do, we are interested in diversity and learning about new cultures. But you really think that shop keeper in Cairo who can communicate in basic English to the tourists who come by his shop, or the cattle herder in South America, or the Eastern European wants to learn Chinese? English is unique because it is spoken in some form by so many different people, in different places, around the globe. Whereas Chinese is mostly spoken by Chinese nationals, overseas Chinese, or other Asians. Quantity vs quality.

I know my post doesn't directly deal with the ESL market, but I think it is more important to look at long term trends in general to get an accurate picture of what is to come.

Anyways have a great weekend folks! It's gonna be a hot one tomorrow~ 32C! Have fun.

[hagwonnewbie]

Chinese and English may becoming competing languages internationally, but English has a strong enough foothold at this point to remain as the #1 language until the end of humanity.