David Christian: On Language, Information, And Why We Have A History

“We are blessed with language, a system of communication that is so powerful and so precise, that we can share what we've learned with such precision, that it can accumulate in the collective memory. And that means, it can outlast the individuals who learned that information, and it can accumulate from generation to generation, and that’s why as a species we are so creative and so powerful, and that’s why we have a history.” (12:45) --David Christian

Nicely put by Mr. Christian. That said, we, as species, would be even more creative and more powerful and we would have an even more complex history if we also shared the information accumulated by the world's other language speakers. READ MORE: The Coming of Post-Translational Society

How to Promote Chinese (or any other) Culture to the World

SOME LANGUAGES are weaker than others when it comes to adaption, survival, and - eventually - dominating others. [READ BLOG AT BIG THINK]

China is not the only modern nation that rose to become a superpower, but it is the first that doesn't have an alphabet.

The letters Chinauses for phonetic transcription today – called 'pinyin' – had been imported from the West. Originally, the Chinese characters' pronunciation had to be memorized from the go-get. There are some 45,000 of them!

So unless the world is switching into rote learning mode any time soon, which is unlikely because English with its 26 letters is so much more lucid, how could the Chinese language neverthelessinfluence the way people all over the world think (and act)?

The solution is simple but takes guts to implement: Stop translating Chinese key terminologies. Here's why: READ IT AT SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST.