More Young South Koreans Opt to Learn Chinese

[dArKeR]

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean teen-ager Lee Jun-ho hopes to talk himself into a job someday -- in Chinese.

Snubbing offers from two local universities in favor of a language institute in downtown Seoul, the 19-year-old studies Chinese seven hours a day in hopes of winning a place at a prestigious school in Shanghai or Beijing.

Lee has embraced a growing trend in South Korea (news - web sites), where more and more young people are opting to focus their foreign language skills on Chinese rather than English, the traditional lingua franca of the business world.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=2&u=/nm/20040918/lf_nm/korea_chinese_dc

I don't think anyone in the world thought this would happen.

[Maple]

1. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world

Of course we all thought it would happen.

'Traditional'....meaning only for a short time in world history.

Same as French, Spanish, Latin etc once were.