Languages By GDP

Came across a very interesting chart over here:

 

 

“This short article provides one picture of the economic significance of different languages, with a breakdown of the percentages of world GDP by language. Not only does it show the current breakdown, but it also provides data for the years 1975 to 2002 to show modern trends. The most notable feature is the steady rise of Chinese and slow relative decline of Japanese and most European languages. Korean and Indic languages also show growth over that period, though slower than Chinese.”

 

Now here’s the same chart over the period 2003-2010 (projected from 2003):

 

 

More current data can be found here:

 

Total GDP per language area in 2008 in billion US dollars at market exchange rates (as a % of world GDP in parenthesis) >> population in 2008 (UN figures for the countries and territories making up each language area, not the actual number of speakers) :

 

1- English: 19,837+ (32.6%+) >> 481.7 million+

2- Chinese: 5,210 (8.6%) >> 1,358.1 million

3- Japanese: 4,924 (8.1%) >> 127.2 million

4- German: 4,504 (7.4%) >> 96.4 million

5- Spanish: 4,364 (7.2%) >> 416.8 million

6- French: 4,097 (6.7%) >> 426.7 million

7- Italian: 2,332 (3.8%) >> 60.3 million

8- Russian: 1,959 (3.2%) >> 189.0 million

9- Arabic: 1,914 (3.1%) >> 342.1 million

10- Portuguese: 1,913 (3.1%) >> 249.2 million

11- Dutch: 1,267 (2.1%) >> 24.6 million

12- Korean: 973 (1.6%) >> 72.2 million

13- Malay-Indonesian: 931 (1.5%) >> 263.7 million

14- Turkish: 729 (1.2%) >> 71.5 million

15- Hindi-Urdu: 570 (0.9%) >> 720.8 million

 

And perhaps the most interesting of all, GDP by number of speakers:

 

GDP per capita per language area (at market exchange rates):

Dutch: 51,466 US dollars

German: 46,703

Japanese: 38,722

Italian: 38,699

Korean: 13,472

Spanish: 10,471

Russian: 10,365

Turkish: 10,200

French: 9,602

Portuguese: 7,676

Arabic: 5,596

Chinese: 3,836

Malay-Indonesian: 3,530

Hindi-Urdu: 791

 

I’ve been saying all along that the Netherlands was awesome. Sort of surprised to see Italian so high up, though.

China's First Internet Gaming Law / 中国第一部网游专项法规实施

中国第一部网游专项法 规实施 各方详解四大看点

Saw this on CCTV this morning, the caption, of course, being "保护未成年人是核心" (protecting the children is the core [of the law]). What will the law do? A lot of good stuff:

1. People are going to be required to provide their real names (backed up by ID) when gaming.
2. Forced player killing is now banned, due to fears that killing other players in video games will lead to killing other people in real life. ()
3. New restrictions on online markets.
4. You have to have at least 10,000,000 yuan in registered capital to be a gaming company. The point here is to reduce the number of online games. If there are only big companies, the games are easier to control.

Whether this law can be enforced effectively/will have an effect is questionable, but it reveals the government's increasing eagerness to control the internet. "Protecting the children" my ass.

More Bible Fun

Anyone read Judges 19:1-30 lately? I mean, reading the Old Testament every Saturday kinda steels you to some of the more "inappropriate" stories, but I was nevertheless surprised to stumble upon this, which I had somehow missed. Basically, here's what happens:

A Levite (a member of a certain Jewish tribe) goes and gets married to this woman in Bethlehem. She ditches him (they don't say why) and goes back to her dad's house, with the guy in hot pursuit. He stays at the dad's house for a while, eating and drinking, and then starts off on the journey to bring her back to his place. They stop off at a town along the way, where a nice old man lets them stay at his house. Then, in a scene strongly reminiscent of the attempt at gay gang rape in Genesis 19, a mob surrounds the house and demands the man come out (so that they can anally rape him). Instead, the old man, like Lot, offers his virgin daughter and the Levite's wife up to be raped. The Levite then gets fed up and gives the relentless mob his wife (I assume she consented), whom they proceed to rape all night long. She dies on his doorstep the next morning. He takes the body back to his house, where he dismembers it and sends a piece to each tribe of Israel, as a reminder of how terrible things have gotten in the country.

This is almost as fun as the time where Moses kills all men and women in the city and gets the Israelites to take the little girls as virgins "for themselves" (yeah, I wonder what that means...). Oh, and then they sacrifice some of them to God. Sweet.

How To Keep A New Year's Resolution, And Also Informational Content

I've figured it out -- life. How stuff works. How you can use a program like this not only to do well in school and master Chinese, but also to run your life and brainwash yourself. Here's how:

Have you ever read a really good, moving book, movie, or motivational speech? You felt really good about yourself for a few days afterward, resolved to change your ways, but inevitably failed -- am I right, or am I right? (Right. In fact, I'm always right -- get used to it.) Why? Because the enthusiasm faded away. But if you've got an SRS program to remind you of why you felt motivated in the first place, then everything's chill, right? Theoretically, you can maintain a consistent level of motivation all the time, making permanent change inevitable. SRS the quotes, mister! You can SRS quotes! SRS images, moving content, audio! Whatever the hell you want! It's your life -- do what the shit you want with it. Just like you do with Chinese -- remind yourself not of words but of ideas. Like advertising. But for good things.

And the cooler thing is, you can do the same thing with arguments or facts. Want to become a debate master? Just memorize your arguments and your facts -- most debates are just repetitions of old debates anyway. The winner is simply he who's memorized the most steps. (The same with chess; the best players are those who've studied the most old games.) You forget stuff, but you don't have to -- not with your brain in a file on your desktop, you don't! And interestingly, this way, you won't be as easily able to brainwash, because when you caught up in a whole new set of facts or theories or a certain school of thought, you'll always have the other ideas in your SRS to serve as a buffer, keeping you safely away from radicalism and firmly anchored to reality. You'll become a composite of ideas, rather than a parrot of one. I mean, you'll have all the facts at your disposal! You can make your own ideas with them even after you've long forgetten the original arguments! Isn't that cool?!

Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there -- the important point is that we humans only have a limited time here on earth, so we've got to take in as much shit as possible. This is not a trade-off situation here: this is fucking zero-sum, my friend. You waste time watching no-content cartoons, you simply loose time. Boom. Gone. Never gone get it back. It is striking how much time we waste when we could be absorbing information -- while walking (put some informational content on your MP3 player to absorb), while watching TV (watch something fun and at least somewhat informative -- military channel's my pick), and even SRSing (maximize your time -- you're doing Chinese sentences, so make those sentences facts about 70s pop stars; learn about them and Chinese at the same time!).

Maximize. Beat the boss. Win the game.

Regarding That Chinese Stuff Back There

I do want to start writing in Chinese, but Blogger, blocked in China, is not the suitable platform, especially as I will be writing in simplified Chinese. So expect to see more posts from here:

http://arieh.blog.sohu.com/

I will continue to post here in English.

Yours,
Me

你好！

对不起，更多的是我发现，汉语成了我的友语，我的爱语，本来只是某一种语言，只是课的内容，但是怎么可能还算是这样呢？我的生活是汉语，我的媒体是汉语，我的初恋是汉语，我就是汉语。我用汉语来写下来我最深的感觉！我想不到一个不会说不会写中文的我。我如何能忘记她，我的爱？怎么会忘记我写过的情书呢？想不到，我想不到啊。。。

bye

I've been doing some thinking lately. A lot of thinking. About how we don't get choose the language we were born with. about how we are so willing to let ourselves be its slaves. About how this is unacceptable, and about how this is not freedom. if i want to be free, really Free, i have to choose the language i speak and write. my choice.my goddamn choice.

not to say i dont like english i like it. but it was forced on me.i had no say.i might have picked english anyway but i might have not

so im going to write in chinese now,.
why mostly for this reason
everything i do is already chinese
mightaswellstartwritingmybloginchinese
canigomorethanthis
isitpossible
yes
好

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