Vienna

In just five years, the number of non-Chinese people learning Mandarin Chinese has soared to 30 million. What is fuelling this expansion, and will it change the status of English as a global language?

Shanghai-born lawyer Kailan Shu Lucas of Chinese Learning Centre organises lessons in Mandarin, the main Chinese language, for pupils in London - and she is very busy.

She now co-ordinates lessons for 12 London schools. She believes that in most cases, having their children study the language is a career calculation made by the parents.

"Parents nowadays think that in 10-20 years' time, when their children are in adulthood, China will be even bigger - and so learning Chinese will be a very helpful tool," she told BBC World Service's Analysis programme.

"This will be a very useful, important language to learn."

Versatile

In London, the parents of most of the non-Chinese students studying Mandarin Chinese are from the finance industry.

Kailan said that in this industry, China is "a big thing."

"That influences the parents' thoughts," she added.

"They want their children to learn Chinese and be more versatile in terms of job prospects in the future."

The belief is that China is not just a new rival, but a new provider, not just a UK phenomenon - in the US too, numbers of teenagers taking Chinese have rocketed.

In 1998, just 6,000 student enrolled in Mandarin programmes. That figure is now 50,000.

"Students want to sign up for it; parents are asking for it; communities are asking for it," said Brett Lovejoy, of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

"It's self-evident that children will be much better off economically and in job seeking if Chinese programmes are adopted."

In the UK, the number of students at colleges and universities taking Chinese as their main subject doubled between 2002 and 2005. Similar increases are reported in most Western nations.

This has not happened without encouragement from Beijing, where the government is actively promoting the speaking of Mandarin abroad.

Hundreds of teachers have been sent to Africa, and since 2004, China has set up "Confucius Institutes" around the world, actively promoting Mandarin Chinese.

So far, they have signed contracts with 40 universities in 25 countries to establish these joint projects.

Global language

And professor David Crystal, a leading authority on how languages work and how they change, explained that the explosion in the numbers learning Chinese is also down to demographic influences at home.

"In modern times, as cultures have changed - especially in Britain, the United States and Australia - as the countries have become increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, then the languages that come with those groups of immigrants become an increasingly important part of the culture," he said.

"London is one of the multi-lingual centres of the world... the monolingual tradition of English in the past is changing very much, and I think Chinese is one of the important factors.

"People who used to be able to make their way in the world as monolingual English speakers are now finding that they've got to compete with people who are genuinely multilingual."

Despite the big increase, most analysts agree Chinese is not about to replace English as the "global language" in the immediate future.

But professor Crystal added that this may not always be the case.

"It all depends on the power of the people who speak it - especially their economic power," said professor Crystal.

"A thousand years ago, people would have said it would be absurd that Latin would not be spoken in 1,000 years' time. But we know that has happened. It can only take 100 years or so for the language balance of power to shift. "Money talks. Currently, the language money talks is the dollar. But it might not always be that way."

To Attract Jade by Laying Bricks

During the Tang dynasty, there lived a man named Jau Gu, who was a very talented poet. Jau Gu's poems were so well-written that even famous poets of his time enjoyed reading them.

At that time, in a place called Wu, there lived a man named Chang Jian, who also liked to write poems. Chang Jian greatly admired Jau Gu's literary talent, and longed to know him personally. One day, Chang Jian heard that Jau Gu would be travelling to Wu. He knew that Jau Gu would definitely go visit Ling Yan Temple during his trip, because this was a very famous place which everyone who came to Wu went to see. So Chang Jian went first to the temple, and on the wall which was set aside for guests' comments and ideas, wrote two lines of poem.

When Jau Gu saw the two lines of poetry on the temple wall, he could not help adding another two lines, because Chinese poems are always composed of at least four lines. And so Chang Jian achieved his goal. He said, "My poem is a brick, and Jau Gu's poem is jade, I layed a brick, and attracted jade!"

This idiom is now a polite expression often used when giving an opinion or delivering a speech. It means that what one is offering is somehow lacking, and one is in hopes that others will, seeing it, offer something that is better.

抛砖引玉

    唐朝时有一个叫赵嘏的人，他的诗写的很好。曾因为一句“长笛一声人倚楼”得到一个“赵倚楼”的称号。那个时候还有一个叫常建的人，他的诗写的也很好，但是他总认为自己没有赵嘏写的好。

    有一次，常建听说赵嘏要到苏州游玩，他十分的高兴。心想，“这是一个向他学习的好机会，千万不能错过。用什么办法才能让他留下诗句呢？”他想，“赵嘏既然到苏州，肯定会去灵岩寺的，如果我先在寺庙里留下半首诗，他看到以后会补全的。”于是他就在墙上题下了半首诗。

    赵嘏后来真的来到了灵岩寺，在他看见墙上的那半首诗后，便提笔在后面补上了两句。常建的目的也就达到了。他用自己不是很好的诗，换来了赵嘏的精彩的诗。

    后来人们说，常建的这个办法，真可谓“抛砖引玉”了。

    这个成语的意思是说，先把自己的不是很好的观点或文章介绍给大家，目的是为了引出别人的高论或佳作。是一个表示自谦的说法。