Is English or Mandarin the language of the future?

Is English or Mandarin the language of the future? - English has been the dominant global language for a century, but is it the language of the future? If Mandarin Chinese is to challenge English globally, then it first has to conquer its own backyard, South East Asia.

In Malaysia's southernmost city of Johor Bahru, the desire to speak good English has driven some children to make a remarkable two-hour journey to school every day.

Nine-year-old Aw Yee Han hops on a yellow mini van at 04:30. His passport is tucked inside a small pouch hung around his neck.

This makes it easier for him to show it to immigration officials when he reaches the Malaysian border.

His school is located on the other side, in Singapore, where unlike in Malaysia, English is the main language.

It's not your typical school run, but his mother, Shirley Chua thinks it's worth it.

"Science and maths are all written in English so it's essential for my son to be fluent in the language," she says.

Robert Lane Greene Author of You Are What You Speak

The assumption that Mandarin will grow with China's economic rise may be flawed. Consider Japan which, after spectacular post-war economic growth, became the world's second-biggest economy. The Japanese language saw no comparable rise in power and prestige.

The same may prove true of Mandarin. The character-based writing system requires years of hard work for even native speakers to learn, and poses a formidable obstacle to foreigners. In Asia, where China's influence is thousands of years old, this may pose less of a problem. But in the West, even dedicated students labour for years before they can confidently read a text of normal difficulty on a random topic.

Finally, many languages in Asia, Africa and the Amazon use "tones" (rising, falling, flat or dipping pitch contours) to distinguish different words. For speakers of tonal languages (like Vietnamese) learning the tones of Mandarin poses no particular difficulty. But speakers of non-tonal languages struggle to learn tones in adulthood - just ask any adult Mandarin-learner for their funniest story about using a word with the wrong tone.

An estimated 15,000 students from southern Johor state make the same bus journey across the border every day. It may seem like a drastic measure, but some parents don't trust the education system in Malaysia - they worry that the value of English is declining in the country.

Since independence from the British in 1957, the country has phased out schools that teach in English. By the early 1980s, most students were learning in the national language of Malay.

As a result, analysts say Malaysian graduates became less employable in the IT sector.

"We've seen a drastic reduction in the standard of English in our country, not just among the students but I think among the teachers as well," says political commentator Ong Kian Ming.

Those who believe that English is important for their children's future either send their kids to expensive private schools or to Singapore, where the government has been credited as being far-sighted for adopting the language of its former colonial master.

Nearly three-quarters of the population in Singapore are ethnic Chinese but English is one of the national languages and very widely-spoken.

Many believe that this has helped the city state earn the title of being the easiest place to do business, by the World Bank.

Lost in translation

• Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world
• Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world's most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO
• Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry
• English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages
• Also includes French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin
• 2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260

Source: BBC Languages

However, the dominance of English is now being challenged by the rise of China in Singapore.

The Singapore Chinese Chamber Institute of Business has added Chinese classes for business use in recent years.

Students are being taught in Mandarin rather than the Hokkien dialect spoken by the older Chinese immigrants.

These courses have proved popular, ever since the government began providing subsidies for Singaporeans to learn Chinese in 2009 during the global financial crisis.

"The government pushed to provide them with an opportunity to upgrade themselves so as to prepare themselves for the economic upturn," says chamber spokesperson Alwyn Chia.

Some businesses are already desperate for Chinese speakers.

Lee Han Shih, who runs a multimedia company, says English is becoming less important to him financially because he is taking western clients to do business in China.

"So obviously you need to learn English but you also need to know Chinese," says Mr Lee.

As China's economic power grows, Mr Lee believes that Mandarin will overtake English. In fact, he has already been seeing hints of this.

"The decline of the English language probably follows the decline of the US dollar.

"If the renminbi is becoming the next reserve currency then you have to learn Chinese."

More and more, he says, places like Brazil and China are doing business in the renminbi, not the US dollar, so there is less of a need to use English.

Bilingualism

Indeed, China's clout is growing in South East Asia, becoming the region's top trading partner.

But to say that Mandarin will rival English is a "bit of a stretch", says Manoj Vohra, Asia director at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Even companies in China, who prefer to operate in Chinese, are looking for managers who speak both Mandarin and English if they want to expand abroad, he says.

"They tend to act as their bridges."

So the future of English is not a question of whether it will be overtaken by Mandarin, but whether it will co-exist with Chinese, says Vohra.

He believes bilingualism will triumph in South East Asia.

It is a sound economic argument, but in Vietnam's case, there is resistance to learning Mandarin.

The country may share a border with China, but the Vietnamese government's choice to not emphasise Mandarin is an emotional one, says leading economist Le Dang Doanh.

Shirley Chua fears her son's English will suffer in the Malaysian school system

"All the streets in Vietnam are named according to generals and emperors that have been fighting against the Chinese invasion for 2000 years," he says.

Tensions flared up again last May over the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

Anti-Chinese sentiment means that young Vietnamese are choosing to embrace English - the language of a defeated enemy. Many families still bear the psychological scars from the Vietnam War with the United States.

Yet there is no animosity towards English because the founding father of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, made a clear distinction between the so-called American imperialists who were bombarding Vietnam and the American people, says Le Dang Doanh.

Many Vietnamese who have lost family members during the war are now studying in America, he says.

"We never forget any victim in the past but in order to industrialise and normalise a country, Vietnam needs to speak English."

The Vietnamese government has an ambitious goal to ensure all young people leaving school by 2020 will have a good grasp of the English language.

Vietnamese Ngoc Tu only listens to music in English

But it's not hard for young Vietnamese to accept English. For some, the language offers a sense of freedom in Vietnam, where the one-party communist state retains a tight grip on all media.

In a public square in central Hanoi, a group of young men are break-dancing to the pulsing beats of western hip hop. Ngoc Tu, 20, says he only listens to English music.

"The Ministry of Culture has banned a lot of [Vietnamese] songs and any cultural publications that refer to freedom or rebellion but... English songs are not censored."

It is debatable whether English or Mandarin will dominate in South East Asia in the future. There are arguments for both on the economic front.

But culturally, there is no dispute.

Even Mandarin language enthusiasts like Singaporean businessman Mr Lee, says that English will remain popular so long as Hollywood exists.

The success of movies such as Kung Fu Panda, an American production about a Chinese animal, has caused a lot of anxiety in China, he says.

There have been many cartoons in China about pandas before, but none had reached commercial success, says Mr Lee.

"The moment Kung Fu Panda hit the cinemas everybody watched it. They bought the merchandise and they learned English." ( bbc.co.uk )

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Did Hitler Have a Secret Son?

Did Hitler Have a Secret Son? Evidence Supports Alleged Son’s Claims - Until his death in 1985, Jean-Marie Loret believed that he was the only son of Adolf Hitler. There is now renewed attention to evidence from France and Germany that apparently lends some credence to his claim.

Did Hitler Have a Secret Son?

Loret collected information from two studies; one conducted by the University of Heidelberg in 1981 and another conducted by a handwriting analyst that showed Loret’s blood type and handwriting, respectively, were similar to the Nazi Germany dictator who died childless in 1945 at age 56.

The evidence is inconclusive but Loret’s story itself was riveting enough to warrant some investigation. The French newspaper Le Pointe published an account last week of Loret’s story, as he told Parisian lawyer Francois Gibault in 1979.

Le Pointe retells Gibault’s reaction to Loret’s claim:

“Master, I am the son of Hitler! Tell me what I should do,” Gibault told Le Pointe.

According to Le Pointe, the “Paris lawyer, does not believe his ears. The man before him is rather large, speaks perfect French without an accent, and is not a crackpot. His inspiring story is no less true.”

Loret claimed that his mother, Lobojoie Charlotte, met Hitler in 1914, when he was a corporal in the German army and she was 16. She described Hitler as “attentive and friendly.” She and Hitler would take walks in the countryside, although conversation often was complicated by their language barrier. Yet, despite their differences, after an inebriated night in June 1917, little Jean-Marie was born in March 1918, according to Loret.

Neither Loret nor the rest of his mother’s family knew of the circumstances of his birth until the early 1950s when she confessed to her son that Hitler was his father. She had given her only son up for adoption in 1930 but stayed in touch with him, according to Loret.

After this realization, according to LePointe, Loret began his journey to find out if the story was true, researching with a near-manic determination. He enlisted geneticists, handwriting experts and historians. He wrote a book, “Your Father’s Name Was Hitler,” that details that journey. It will now be republished to include the new studies that Loret believed confirmed his claim. ( abcnews.go.com )

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Adorable pictures of newborn babies taken the moment they drop off to sleep

Adorable pictures of newborn babies taken the moment they drop off to sleep - These cute newborn babies just can't be bothered having their pictures taken... all they want is a nice big snooze.

The adorable images were taken by Philadelphia photographer Dan Cueller who waits until the very moment the babies drop off to sleep to capture the perfect picture.

At just two-weeks-old the pampered tots must 'endure' up to four hours of feeding and cuddling to reach just the right level of sleepiness to doze off and be perfectly posed for the cutest of pictures.

Rock-a-bye baby: Twelve-day-old Edward drifts off to sleep in this adorable picture by professional baby portrait photographer Dan Cueller

Incredibly 29-year-old Dan only became a baby portrait photographer three-years-ago after losing his job as an IT technician because of the recession.

He said: 'Newborns are naturally cute and they can't really do much at this age.

'You can't just ask a baby to do something, so it's usually best and easier to pose them when they are asleep.

'The trick to photographing newborns is really just waiting, keeping them warm and full.

Off to la la land: Another picture of baby Edward. To achieve the perfect image the newborns are pampered for four hours being fed and cuddled until they become sleepy

Cute as a button: Baby Edward drifts into a deep sleep during the exhausting photo shoot

Content: Little Edward's huge smile says it all as he curls up in a blanket while ten-day-old Matthew (right) nods off with his head in his hands

'Then it's just repeating the process for each setup.

'The age of the child is also very important - it's usually best to photograph them when they are under two-weeks-old.'

One of the cutest pictures features a baby dozing off in a hanging basket.

But to get the perfect picture of such little people requires a soft touch.

Turn off the lights: Matthew curls up for a kip

Docile: Photographer Dan says getting the perfect picture of such little people requires a soft touch

Just hanging out: Lula, aged just six days old, dozes off while wrapped up in a cheesecloth

Snug as a bug: Another shot of six-day-old Lula looking well wrapped up

Dan explains: 'The hanging baby's name is Lula.

'She is hanging in cheesecloth in her father's hands, which were just outside of the frame.

'Hanging portraits are always fun to do.

'The challenges are waiting for the right moment lift the baby safely.

Do not disturb! Lula, aged just six days old, enjoys a nap

Break: Incredibly 29-year-old Dan only became a professional photographer three-years-ago after losing his job as an IT technician because of the recession

Keep the noise down! Lula holds her hand over her ears as she tries to get some well-earned kip

'We always have several hands near-by just outside of the frame.

'And if the baby is even slightly awake we won't do it until they are in a deep sleep.'

Since Dan began his new profession, charging $350 (£220) per portrait session, his business has been baby-booming. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Charlie Chaplin mystery

Charlie Chaplin mystery — They foiled plots and cracked Nazi codes, but Britain's spies were unable to solve the mystery of Charlie Chaplin's birth.

Although the entertainer is celebrated as one of London's most famous sons, newly declassified files reveal that Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence service found no records to back up Chaplin's claim that he was born in the city on April 16, 1889.

Uncertainty about Chaplin's origins linger to this day — a mystery Chaplin himself may have helped to nurture.

FILE - In this 1914 file photo, actor Charlie Chaplin is seen when he was a player in Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, at an unknown location. Although the entertainer is celebrated as one of London's most famous sons, newly declassified files reveal that Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence service found no records to back up Chaplin's claim that he was born in the city on April 16, 1889. Uncertainty about Chaplin's origins linger to this day - a mystery Chaplin himself may have helped to nurture. (AP Photo, File)

The previously secret file, released Friday by Britain's National Archives, shows that MI5 investigated the silent film star in the 1950s at the request of U.S. authorities, who had long suspected him of communist sympathies. MI5 historian Christopher Andrew said the FBI's red-hating chief, J. Edgar Hoover, privately denounced Chaplin as "one of Hollywood's parlor Bolsheviks."

To the spies' surprise, there was no record of the performer's birth.

"It would seem that Chaplin was either not born in this country or that his name at birth was other than those mentioned," MI5 concluded.

Chaplin's life is a Dickensian rags-to-riches story. Raised in London in a family of music-hall entertainers, he moved to the United States in 1910 and became one of Hollywood's first megastars with his shabby, bowler-hatted everyman persona, the Little Tramp.

He was a box office sensation in movies such as "The Gold Rush," ''City Lights" and "The Kid," but his left-wing friends and activities alarmed the FBI, which began tracking the actor in the early 1920s.

In 1952, as fears of Soviet infiltration raged in the U.S., American authorities asked MI5 to investigate Chaplin's political allegiances and personal background, including a long-standing rumor that Charlie Chaplin was an alias and the performer's true name was Israel Thornstein.

But British spies could find no trace of him in the birth records at London's Somerset House under Chaplin, Thornstein or Harley, his mother's stage name.

The spies also checked French records amid rumors that he might have been born in the town of Fontainebleau — but that, too, drew a blank.

Elsewhere in the file, agents speculate that Chaplin might have Russian roots. There was an allegation that he had once spoken of "going back to Russia."

"This might refer to paying another visit, or it might denote his origin as Russia," noted senior MI5 officer W.M.T. Magan, speculating that Chaplin might have come from a Jewish family fleeing pogroms at the end of the 19th century.

Film historian Matthew Sweet said rumors about Chaplin's roots had been swirling well before the 1950s. The French claim stemmed from a fan magazine article from the 1910s that suggested Chaplin was born while his performer mother was on tour. The idea he was Jewish appears to have been an assumption by some fans that came to be widely believed. Chaplin did little to correct the record.

"The borderline between fact and fiction about celebrities was much less clearly policed than it is today," Sweet said.

MI5 seemed content to let the mystery of Chaplin's birth remain. British agents were skeptical of American claims that the star was a communist threat, with John Marriott, the head of MI5's counter-subversion branch, calling the U.S. allegations "unreliable."

"It is curious that we can find no record of Chaplin's birth, but I scarcely think that this is of any security significance," he wrote in 1952.

The U.S. thought differently and Chaplin was refused re-entry to the United States in 1952. He settled in Switzerland and lived there until his death in 1977.

The dossier shows MI5 continued to track Chaplin for several years. It contains newspaper clippings about the actor, snatches of conversation from suspected radicals who knew him and letters sent from Russia to "Comrade Charly Chaplin" via the communist magazine Challenge.

But by 1958, MI5 had concluded Chaplin was not a threat.

"We have no substantial information of our own against Chaplin, and we are not satisfied that there are reliable grounds for regarding him as a security risk," the agency noted. "It may be that Chaplin is a Communist sympathizer but on the information before us he would appear to be no more than a 'progressive' or radical."

Nonetheless, a taint of impropriety lingered. Files released in 2002 showed that the British government blocked a knighthood for Chaplin for nearly 20 years because of American concerns about his politics and private life — he was married four times, twice to 16-year-old girls. He eventually became Sir Charles Chaplin in March 1975, two years before his death at age 88.

Chaplin's origins remain cloudy, although the 1891 census records the then 2-year-old as living in south London with his mother and elder brother Sydney.

Evidence unearthed last year added another layer of mystery.

In a locked drawer of a bureau left behind after Chaplin's death, his family found a letter from a man in England named Jack Hill. It claimed Chaplin had been born "in a caravan (that) belonged to the Gypsy Queen, who was my auntie" in a Roma community near Birmingham in central England.

Chaplin had alluded to Roma roots in his autobiography, writing that "Grandma was half-Gypsy. This fact was the skeleton in our family cupboard."

Sweet said the letter was not proof of Chaplin's birthplace but evidence he cultivated the mystery of his origins.

"It is very widely accepted that he was born in London in 1889, but the piece of paper just isn't there," Sweet said.

"That letter is not proof that he was born in a Gypsy encampment. It is proof that he was terrifically attracted to the idea of that story, enough to keep the letter and lock it away and think of it as something important.

"The idea of the mystery of his own birth is something that he quite enjoyed, I think." ( Associated Press )

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Seven ways to manage your digital photo collection

Seven ways to manage your digital photo collection - We'll show you how to bring order to your photo archives

Nobody wants to have a photo collection that looks like an annex of the National Archives run amok. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to imagine that your spectacular zoo animal photos are neatly organized when, in fact, this is not the case. Clutter is clutter, whether it’s visibly creeping across the kitchen table or invisibly lurking inside your computer. We know imposing order on your photo collection can seem daunting, so here’s a blueprint for organizing those Kodak moments so they’ll be safe and easy to find.

1. Standardize your folders. The best place to start your attack is by creating a uniform folder naming system for your pictures. Try creating folders by year, with subfolders organized by month or season ("June 2011” or “Winter 2010”). Within these folders, you can create other folders for specific events — “David’s graduation, May 13,” for example. However you decide to set it up, it’s a good idea to include the date somewhere in your naming system. If all this sounds like too much work, proceed directly to Step 4 to learn about programs that will do the legwork of organizing for you.

2. Attack the project. Once you’ve decided how to organize your memories, download your recent photos to your computer and start sorting. (There’s no need to rename and reorganize everything from the past 8 years — that can be a separate project for a rainy weekend.) As you’re sorting your photos, take the opportunity to delete all but the best pictures.

If deleting seems too final, try creating a “least favorites” folder for photos that might not be worth saving. Wait a few months; if you still haven’t opened the folder to rescue any of the hangers-on, it’s probably safe to go ahead and delete them. Finally, don’t forget to delete photos from your memory card once you’ve moved them to your computer; there’s nothing worse than missing a great photo op because your SD card was full.

3. Embrace the date. If your artistic sensibility allows it, turning on the automatic date printing feature on your camera can be a big organizational help. Yes, your pictures will be slightly blemished by having the date printed in the lower right corner, but think of the hours of discussion you’ll save yourself in the future. (“Now, is this from Thanksgiving 2008? Or was that the year Jason was dating the trapeze artist?”) The tradeoff might be worth it.

4. Alter and enjoy your photos. So you now have a fantastically well-organized photography collection — so what? Half the fun of having photos is sharing them, and there are a multitude of programs that can help. Apple users can use iPhoto, PC fans have Windows Live Photo Gallery, and anybody can download Google’s free Picasa photo management program.

All three programs offer similar features — basic photo editing (cropping, red-eye reduction, and so on), slideshows, and the capability to share photo albums online. Another common point is that all three programs offer features that will organize your photos for you. If you already have a system you love, the automatic organizing may be overkill; on the other hand, it could be a huge time-saver, especially if you have a large backlog of unsorted photos.

If your digital camera is a recent acquisition, dig out the paperwork and extras you got at the time of purchase. Chances are, the camera came with its own photo management program. Its features will probably be similar to those of the programs we just mentioned, but it’s worth a look to see if has any cool features you've been overlooking and living without.

5. Back up your photos to a storage device. Now that your photo collection is being managed with the same precision as NASA’s shuttle launches, it’s time to prepare for the worst-case scenario. The safest and easiest way to back up pictures is by saving copies to an external hard drive.

If you have a CD or DVD burner, another option is burning your pictures to disc. The downside is that this is far more time-consuming; also, you run the risk of having your photos trapped in obsolete media if CDs someday go the way of floppy disks.

If you really, really care about not losing your photos, no matter what, it might be worth considering keeping backup copies of some of your most precious files in a location outside your home, like a bank safe deposit box. A USB thumb drive is the perfect option for this approach, since it's nice and small.

6. Back up your photos online. Another backup option is to store copies of your photos online. Websites like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums allow you to upload your photos free; you can choose to make them viewable to the general public or only to friends and family members you've specified.

Dropbox is another good option for online storage; think of it as an external hard drive, but online. You can get up to 2GB of storage free; if you need more space than that, you can purchase a subscription that gives you up 100GB of storage. It’s your choice whether to keep your Dropbox folder to yourself or share it with friends or family to create a communal file repository.

7. Maintain your momentum. Once you’ve set up your grand organizational scheme, don’t slack off! Set aside a little time once a month to download and organize your photos. The good news is, organizing pictures isn’t really a whole-brain activity, so you can easily combine your photo maintenance with, say, watching TV or entertaining your cat. Before you know it, your photo collection will be practically managing itself, and you'll be free to engage in more amusing pursuits like balancing your checkbook. Good luck! ( tecca.com )

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