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Comment by United857 | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that people think that having a common national language has to come at the expense of local languages/dialects.

Compare the language policy of China with that of India, where even though Hindi and English are nominally the languages on a national level and all students are in theory taught at least one of them, the government doesn't try to actively suppress other local languages in schools or media.

As a result, an educated Indian is often trilingual in English, Hindi, and their local language, whereas in mainland China, knowledge of non-Mandarin dialects is decreasing in the younger generations.

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> ...at the expense of local languages/dialects.

Worth noting that many Chinese languages are facing extinction, including Mongolian, Manchu, Bouyei [1]. In particular, Manchu, the imperial language a little more than a century ago, was known by less than 100 people and mastered by less than 10 in 2013 [2].

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-languages/chinas-mi... "China's minority languages face threat of extinction"

[2]: https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/once-imp... " Once imperial language, Manchu facing extinction"

Indian language / multiculturalism is exactly the basketcase PRC wants to avoid.

>an educated Indian is often trilingual in English, Hindi, and their local language

An uneducated Chinese is still going to be fluent in mandarin going forward, the national language. 50% of Indian youth are bilingual 20% are trilingual. That's a lingua franca failure.

> language / multiculturalism is exactly the basketcase PRC wants to avoid

And the EU is probably on the verge of collapse, seeing as trilingualism is basically expected from anyone university educated.

Less about collapse and more about progress. Having common language/culture facilitates rapid development which PRC did relative to India. Also facilitates common market and conditions for supporting national champions which EU struggles with relative to PRC. India/EU embrace multiculturalism because it has no choice, system is too weak / politics to fraught to meaningfully unify, even if they wanted to. They're not going to collapse or even stagnate, but they're also not going anywhere fast.

You're pushing it too far. Trilingualism is expected in the EU for University educated people, which are a minority. In the Indian system not being trilingual means you are at a severe disadvantage, whereas you can do pretty well in the EU knowing only English, let alone being bilingual.

Trilingualism in the EU is expected for high school educated people, not university.

Was educated there, we were taught the local language, English and one more language of our choice (I picked Spanish)

Nobody is actually expected (emphasis on expected) to really know the third taught language beyond a couple phrases later in life. Many do, but it's not a universal fact.

It's more common for people to know two "local" languages (living near a border) and English, than the third language taught in school.

Nah. The expected level at the third language is not sufficient for you to live in it, and you will forget most of it. I took Spanish too and I now barely remember anything.

It is a side effect. You should see that young kids will not speak their local language, but they will be able to speak Mandarin and English so much better than their parents. It is more a natural selection. Why do you want to keep local dialects when no one is going to use it? It is like watching a village living in remote area, romantically we wish they stay that way forever, but they will change, modernize and find a better way for themselves.

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