<p>SergioValencia,</p>
<p>Even if the Chinese population is 1.4 billion (and you are correct, it is), there are still about 800-850 million native speakers of the language. Yes, that’s a lot, and I’m not discounting that.</p>
<p>However, your argument that understanding Mandarin means understanding other dialects is false. Ask any Mandarin speaker how good their Cantonese is. Most will shake their heads and say, “I don’t understand it.” Thankfully, all Hong Kong residents (the most likely suspect for someone interested in finance outside of the mainland) learn Mandarin. Nonetheless, to say that you can "easily " understand other dialects is just NOT true. Cantonese and Mandarin, in their spoken forms, are very much phonologically different languages.</p>
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</p>
<p>[No</a>, it’s almost perfect.](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language]No”>Japanese language - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>For one, I’m a Japanese speaker and have a pretty good idea of what goes on with the language. However, 130 million is also the official number published by a number of sources, including the Japanese government itself. Now, feel free to argue, but I’d like to see a source that shows a significantly larger number.</p>
<p>However, what I was arguing was not necessarily the usefulness of either language. I was arguing your 2 billion “Mandarin and Japanese” speaker figure.</p>
<p>There are about 850 or so million native Mandarin speakers, and maybe around 150 million or so speaking it as a second language (think Hong Kong and Macau) and about 130 or so million Japanese speakers. That does not add up anywhere near to 2 billion. </p>
<p>And no, I’m not confusing the word “Oriental” with “ornamental.” I’m a tad bit more capable than that. Oriental is, at least in North America, generally considered highly offensive. I taught a class here at UCSD on East Asian history, and the general consensus, at least amongst scholars in the US, is that the word is simply not to be used.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.modelminority.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=183[/url]”>http://www.modelminority.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=183</a>
<a href=“Penguin Random House”>Penguin Random House;
<p>Oriental is today seen as being something akin to saying “colored” or “negro.” But this may be my North American lens creeping in. Perhaps you are not from North America, and that may explain it…</p>