Sharia Law has no future neither does the west!

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Russian is not a tonal language, but it is quite difficult for people who do not already speak a Slavic language. The Slavic languages have quite difficult grammar compared to English. Still, it is an Indo-European language as well so it is very distantly related to English. And they have an actual alphabet, unlike the Chinese, and the Cyrillic alphabet is somewhat similar to ours and the Greek alphabet. I think Russian sounds really pretty, and the Soviets made great patriotic music, better than most anthems. This here is from the Red Army Choir, it was later used for the Tetris tune:

I don't think there is much to fear from the Chinese military at the moment, they don't really have the ability to project their strength outside their borders. Manpower isn't that important anymore. Obviously there is a tremendous build up but the US spends like $600 billion a year compared to China's $180 billion. With all of NATO, we spend over a trillion every year on military spending. Personally, I think we could probably afford to halve that and be more than fine. China lives in a dangerous neighborhood, Russia/India/Japan/South Korea/North Korea/Pakistan/Vietnam/Taiwan and the the US of course. I think their military is actually more worried about defense rather conquering like the US seems to be all about.

China wants to stay as far away as possible from ISIS, they have a "Muslim" problem of their own and want no business with real extremists.

Still, that logographic method looks like it takes a lot more effort to learn than an alphabet. I heard that the age at which Chinese children can read a newspaper is higher than for other languages because of needing to learn all the symbols. Not sure why they don't just adopt an alphabet, anything would be better than this mess.

And I've heard someone from Limburg say that the local language was semi-tonal, there is a bit of it in this wikipedia article on Limburgish. And I've been to Dutch Limburg a few times, couldn't really understand the locals, even though I only live a 1-2 hour drive away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburgish_language

yeah...it seems that it would take significantly longer to write, using those intricate characters with little distinguishing factors between some of them, a phrase with the same meaning as one written in the latin or crillic scripts. although it should become fast over time.

a rule of thumb for creating constructed writing systems that i like to follow, is to make every different grapheme as maximally distinct as possible, to account for different manners of handwriting/fonts while keeping them appearing different. naturalistic languages are all over this place (with hebrew resh and dalet looking very similar). i see characters on the computer screen, and unless i zoom in or the characters are a larger type, it's hard for me, who doesn't speak a chinese language, to see individual strokes.

but the calligraphy is wonderful. arabic as well. it would take many generations for an alphabet to be used everywhere and reach the most impoverished parts. plus people seeing it as a sign of unwanted cultural influence.

but really, i'm thankful i has to learn 26 symbols instead of thousands.

here's one ancient form of sinic writing that seems quite pictographic.

http://www.omniglot.com/chinese/jiaguwen.htm



interesting! pitch accent, other European languages have similar features. but nothing quite like chinese or vietnamese

I can remember back when Iraq under Saddam Hussein had had a million man army. Turned out size meant little when most of the recruits were badly trained, armed, and motivated, especially when up against the U.S. led coalition's professional troops.

China is now getting Involved in the war against Isis because of defectors from China Joining Isis. Isis Also plans to expand their Territory from Spain to China like the Peoples Republic of China would not let that happen ISIS has a Death Wish! Same with the idea of trying to take Russia and India they will be destroyed by those countries as well!

Yes - Chinese characters are the equivalent of Egyptian heirglyphics-a symbol means a word-and not a sound.

The disadvantage: you need to learn thousands of symbols to become barely literate, and only a tiny elite become literate.

The advantage: Once you do become literate you can read FAST, and you can read in foreign Chinese "dialects"(actually different languages- Cantonese differs from Mandarin as much as French does from German) as easily as you can read your own language.

If Europeans had used heiroglyphics democracy probably would never have evolved, but (for better or worse) Europe might have become one big unified state (like china) a thousand years before the EU formed, instead being a bunch of small to middling sized countries.

The Chinese invented movable type around 1000 AD (they used porcelin instead of lead, but it was the same idea). But it didnt impact Chinese society much because typesetting in a language that uses 40 thousand "letters" isn't any easier than hand carving type. But when a German goldsmith named Gutenburg independently reinvented movable type in 1450 the new "information technology" took off like wildfire, and changed the world because the technology could be applied to the phonetic alphabets of Europe with revolutionary efficiency.

As I understand it:today the People's Republic does have a new phonetic writing system to supplement their traditional characters.The trouble is that to get traction with that they ALSO have to promote a standardized spoken dialect to go along with it called Putunghua (kind of a concocted 'generic version of spoken chinese' based on Mandarin).

Phonetic is the correct term. Tonal refers to pitch, rather than consonant sounds. Chinese -is- tonal. Several of their words have meanings that are dependent on pitch rather than on basic consonant sound. See http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mandarin1/4480

thanks for that link ruveyn wonder how tone carries over to singing? i imagine it is ignored when the singing is fast enough.

they don't sound exactly the same all the time either, but are modified by any preceding or succeeding tones. tone sandhi: mandarins 3rd tone morphs to 2nd before another 3rd tone. vietnamese has 6 tones (hence all those diacritics!!)

in any language, tone isn't absolute but relative to the intonation/pitch of the whole sentence.

People still believe China will become the biggest power...?

In actual numbers China's GDP is ~$9.5 Trillion!
The U.S. economy ~$17 Trillion!
EU economy ~$17.5 Trillion!
Eurozone economy is between $14 and $17 Trillion...

GDP nominal is the total size of your economy, not to be confused with GDP-PPP

What's the main fear of the Chinese National Government??

Economic Stagnation aka the Deep Freeze.

Chinese economy has been rapidly slowing, which was accelerated by the global recession, due to China being reliant on exports for economic growth.

China has no domestic consumption to sustain itself.
China has been losing manufacturing to its cheaper neighbors as Chinese wages rise.
China economic growth over the past decade has been high due to massive government spending, not due to actual economic growth
Chinese culture is not conducive to capitalism and market based economics
China's economy has passed it's natural market point at the current level
China's economy is the in process of overheating.
China has been actively cooking its books to hide the massive economic slowdown.
China has strict control of their currency and actively keeps it undervalued to keep business in China cheap.
China cannot afford to be a major exporter in the area of high energy and transportation.
China's provinces and cities have borrowed trillions in debt.

With all this combined it is reshaping China's economy beyond the control of the Chinese government.

The Chinese government has three options:

1) Fully liberalize the economy and government allowing for full Western style capitalism and democracy like Japan, S. Korea, Thailand and others in SE Asia have done. This will result higher prices as the Yuan rises to its natural market point against other currencies and slower but sustainable economic growth of roughly 1-3% a year as an exporter.

2)Fully liberalize the economy and government allowing for full Western style capitalism and democracy like Japan, S. Korea, Thailand and others in SE Asia have done. This will result higher prices as the Yuan rises to its natural market point against other currencies while developing a consumer middle class that mirrors American consumer class to allow domestic consumption while becoming less reliant on exports. This will yield a higher rate of economic growth to match the U.S. between 3-6% in most good years.

Option 2 is the most unlikely outcome due to the need to completely remake Chinese culture into American style culture of individualism.

3) Retain the current level of government control and limited market activity, while being forced to end currency controls, allowing the Yuan trade on the open market against the other currencies. This will allow the Yuan to be used internationally, while making prices more expensive in China.

This runs the risk of Soviet style stagnation and economic freeze or Japanese style economic meltdown (Japan hasn't seen a sustained recovery yet).

This means China will see 0-2% economic growth on regular basis.

China has been openly telling their people that option 3 is the future, as China prepares to wind down their massive government spending.
They call it the "new normal" and "new economy".
They are also warning their people to prepare for an economic deep freeze (stagnation).

What's going in the world?

High energy prices which lead to high shipping costs + Chinese labor price increases + Chinese corruption costs + Chinese IP theft + resources cost + tariffs on Chinese goods + dealing with the Chinese government = cheaper to bring business back to the West and moving further into Asia and Africa.

Most manufacturing (middle and high end) is returning to the U.S. and other Western countries because its cheaper and safer now.
Also the demand for goods made in the U.S. is rising a lot each year.
American workers are better and more loyal than the Chinese.

Low end stuff such as textiles and others are moving to Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, other Asian countries and even some African countries because it that much cheaper than it is to do it in China.

China isn't going to be a super power, but it will be major world power like UK, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, etc...

In a lot of ways, I would rather see a world controlled by the Chinese than one controlled by Sharia law. Of course, either scenario wouldn't be all that great, but at least you're allowed to get drunk in China. Can't say the same about many Islamic countries.

ISIS plans to expand their territory fromspain to Western China so China may get involved but China isnt going to let that happen, ISIS has a pipe dream!It will result in this again! Han treats Uyghurs less than dogs same as ISIS! Isis are less than dogs or pigs!

ISIS will never successfully invade China. China will likely nuke their collective asses before that happens.