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[Hamish]

I have been wondering about this problem for a small percentage of my extended existence. Even so, it is a substantial length of time for anyone to consider anything when the period is compared to the short temporal space within which many of my correspondents on this forum have drawn a breath.

It must be some important stuff, right?

So, listen up.

The Chinese culture is going in the hopper.

As a consequence of the policies of the Chinese government itself in conspiracy with C. L. Sholes, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and, my favorite, Steve Wozniack, we are witnessing the suicide of Chinese.

China is emphasizing English, and converting the Chinese written language to the phonetic alphabet with the speed of light, while dressing in western clothes and herding into KFC and McDonald�s listening to American music on little earphones at the threshold of pain. Drop a net load of Chinese kids onto the street of any city in the US and no one would notice them until they opened their mouth to speak. That distinction will only last a few more generations.

The kids I teach will have grandchildren who won�t think learning how to write Chinese �the old way� is an important thing to do, and will regard their grandparents (my students) as retarded old fossils that cling to stupid practices like speaking Chinese at the dinner table.

The belated (500 years after China figured it out) European carving of letters on sticks of wood and clamping them together to print a page at a time resulted in the development of democratic theory, the collapse of the divine right of kings, the American rebellion, the French, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions, and wild sex parties at Fort Lauderdale in the Spring.

Nobody dreamed, certainly not Guttenberg, that a little whittling would do all that.

The ubiquitous standard keyboard is wiping out whatever won�t fit on it, and so fast it is breathtaking.

China has resisted every invasion force that tramped in here, absorbing them and making them Chinese.

There is no wall to protect China from this invasion and the forces are particularly voracious when welcomed with open arms. I have been unable to get more than a handful of Chinese scholars to see the threat I see to the Chinese culture. Uniformly they talk on about the five thousand years of cultural practice that their people will cling to. They do seem to pause when I ask them to think about how they grew up only fifty years ago and compare it with today, and ask them to consider tomorrow, and 50 years from now.

The keyboard, like letters carved on sticks of wood, has power that is not recognized by its victims or its inventers.

That�s what I think.

And you?

Regards,

[ESL Guru]

This same question was asked in the April issue of "English Today", Cambridge press, "China and Chinese, or Chingland and Chinglish?"

[Roger]

Hamish,
a very interesting perspective! But, why this pessimism?

The Chinese are NOT going to ditch their script over the next three generations! Your students know how to write 'Shakespeare' in Chinese characters, but not in Roman letters!
I do not see any reason why they should switch to the Roman alphabet to write Chinese, but I do see a reason for China to adopt the Roman letters into their official script. You can't write 'H2O' using Chinese characters. Why, even number plates can't do without symbols from a foreign culture!
My Chinese colleagues all use computers to write Chinese - it takes a bit longer, yes, but they are so inured to thinking in Chinese even though they are professional teachers! So they type 'S', then a list of characters appears on the screen, they click the right one, and it is inserted into the text. Slow, but faster than writing by hand!
I think the major divide is still between us and them -, or more precisely, between those who create modern gadgets such as mobile phones, remote-controlled aircons or credit cards, and mere users who accept these inventions without realising how much cultural input goes into these products. The SARS outbreak has shown this once again - traditional methods to combat it were popularised through the media, such as drinking vinegar, smoking cigarettes, opening windows AND turning on aircons.
It took Western researchers, medics and knowhow to show the way forward.
Spitting is still being practised. Eating with chopsticks from communal bowls too. Did you know that under Mao, there was a plan to do away with these time-honoured Chinese habits?

[Wolf]

This disease is already in a later stage in Japan.

I was teaching a class of six students one day in Japan. After class I was talking to them in Japanese and I happened to use the word for "ape," which is incidently "shoujou."

No one understood me. I told them I meant a "big monkey", and they said "ah, orangutan" - the Japanese approximation of the English word. THEY DIDN'T KNOW "SHOUJOU." And I'm not wrong, I've still got my Nihongo - English dictionary here. The Japanese word is "shoujou." How many 20 year old English as a native langauge speakers living in England know the English word for "ape?"

Same with the word for meeting - was "kaigi" is "miitingu."

Car went from "kuruma" to "kaa."

Buliding went from "tatemono" to "biru." (The stuff you drink is biiru, or bi-ru.)

Hair went from "kami" to "heya."

By the way the English preposition "up" is a verb in Japanese - "appu wo suru."

Yes, the Japanese had to borrow words for lots of things like TVs (terebi) or computers (konpyutaa). But they also borrow words from English for no particular reason, to the point where you never hear the Japanese origionals. How often do you here "sayonara" in Japan now? It's "Bye - Bye," baby. Their quintisential farewell is biting the big one as we speak. I once saw a mother trying in vain to get her toddler son to say "sayonara" instead of "bye bye" to the kid's grandma. Not a scientific observation, but a symbolic one.

Is this langauge evolution? No, this is the unnatural innundation of unnecessary foreign loan words into a language. If I used as many Japanese words in my posts as I saw English words used in Japan, you'd probably have a hard time understading me unless you also spoke Japanese.

Actually China's inward looking censorship laws are probably protecting their langauge from this. But I think there is a risk - big or small Idon't know - that this could happen here, too. Look at the wholesale consumption of what Western media they DO get their hands on.


Chinese get rid of their script? They already did. They have that newspeak George Orwell "simplified character" system. Okay, you all know that, but that could possibly be the first step, couldn't it? The only places in the world that use "Chinese Characters" Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Sinapore, Japan ... but not hanzi's homeland (I know Japan, HK, Macau and Taiwan at least have high literacy rates).

Just some thoughts and opinions based on personal observation. I make no claim to being an authority. I'm not saying that Chinese is on its way out, but I am saying that there is a possibility that their language could end up "overly influenced" shall we say, by English.