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by oh_sigh 2085 days ago
Chinese is popular regionally in Asia and among diaspora, but it doesn't have the anywhere near the number of outsiders trying to learn the language to tap into the social/cultural system as English does.
1 comments

English took place of French, in future mandarin might replace English.
English is effectively half-French, like French was half-Latin, which in turn was half-Greek. Europeans basically moved from a language to its immediate cousin, for more than 2000 years.

Han might be half-something too but it's definitely not something anybody ever spoke in Europe, South-America, or Africa. Europeans will likely never speak Chinese in numbers comparable to modern-day English.

French and English have much much more in common than English and Mandarin though.