Matt Schiavenza From the Dragon to the Apple- A Sinophile Goes to New York

Myths in Studying Chinese

First, a disclaimer. As an intermediary student, I'm by no means an expert in the Chinese language. Those of you who speak and read at a higher level are encouraged to correct any mistakes I make in this post.

I do, however, feel familiar enough with the language to correct some basic misconceptions common among beginning students or foreigners learning informally in China. Here is a short, informal list of these myths and why they're wrong.

1.The spoken and written languages should be learned separately because they have nothing to do with each other.

Several people come to China with the goal of learning how to speak Chinese. Few, though, seem willing to invest the effort to learn characters. Because they're so unfamiliar to those of us who came to China without having studied an Oriental language before, we assume characters are nothing but a hassle best to be avoided. I've met dozens of foreigners who say, "I just want to speak; I don't care about characters," thinking ignoring the written language would simplify learning how to speak. In fact, those who never learn to write often find that their spoken level plateaus and that progress slows to a crawl after a fairly short length of time.

So what is the relationship between characters and oral Chinese? As most everyone knows, characters aren't phonetic. However, each has a particular meaning and when these meanings are learned, guessing the overall meaning of a word becomes much easier. For example, in Chinese the characer 电 （dian4) roughly means "electricity". When combined with the character 话 (hua4), which means "talk" or "speech", the Chinese word for "telephone", 电话 (dian4hua4) is formed. Similarly, the root character 电 is found in the Chinese words for "computer" (电脑) (dian4nao3), "movie" (电影) (dian4ying3), and "television" (电视) (dian4shi4). In fact, Wenlin (a computerized English-Chinese dictionary) lists no fewer than 997 Chinese words containing the character 电. All, with the exception of a few idioms, have something to do with "electricity". Without visual use of the character, I'd find it more difficult remembering new Chinese words that contain it. Being able to see it on paper (or on a monitor) makes retention a far greater possibility.

2. If you learn 3,000 characters, you'll be able to read a Chinese newspaper article.

Ah, the favorite canard of Chinese-language students everywhere! Somehow, someway, this idea has become so widespread that virtually everyone who comes to China believes it. Inconveniently, it's false.

As mentioned in myth No. 1, most Chinese words are a combination of two or more characters that often have discrete meanings of their own. For example, it would be entirely possible that a student might know the character 电 (dian4) "electric" and 脑 (nao3) "brain" without knowing that, when put together, they mean the relatively simple term "computer".There are thousands of similar examples. In fact, I'll sometimes find that I can read every character in a particular passage yet cannot extract their meaning because I haven't seen them combined in that way before. Also, Chinese is a language rich in idiom, so sometimes even knowing what the characters mean together don't convey their actual usage. To quote a simple example, the Chinese term 旱鸭子 (han4ya1zi) literally means "duck raised on dry land". However, any Chinese person can tell you that the term refers to a person who can't swim. Idioms exist everywhere, but in Chinese they're particularly tricky because of the existence of characters.

A more accurate saying would provide a certain number of words necessary to read a newspaper, yet as far as I know nobody has come up with it.

3. Because of regional accents and dialects, when Chinese people can't understand you, the likeliest explanation is that they simply don't know enough standard Mandarin.

Here's a myth that's both self-serving and condescending, yet commonly voiced by foreigners of all stripes. Imagine this scenario: A foreigner approaches a Chinese person and attempts to communicate a basic idea, using the correct vocabulary and decent syntax. The Chinese person smiles and says they don't understand. The foreigner, thinking the Chinese person is either stupid or treacherous, gets frustrated and either repeats the sentence in a louder voice or walks away frustrated. Then, in a conversation with others, the same foreigner will explain away his communication problem as the fault of the Chinese.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I know this scenario well because, in the past, it has accurately described my behavior. Yet I'm far from the only foreigner who has done this, and I hear it regularly from those who have reached their wits end due to their failure to communicate.

The fact is, most everyone in China (outside of Tibet, Xinjiang, or remote countryside villages) has no difficulty understanding Mandarin even if they don't speak it well themselves. Any miscommunication most likely results from either a syntax error (to quote your calculator), a tonal error, or an improper or unusual use of vocabulary. Recently John at Sinosplice wrote (and I paraphrase) that he didn't learn to speak Chinese well until he took full responsibility for any communication error. He would, for example, remember words or phrases he couldn't express clearly and take special care to learn their tones before using them again. This practice is wise and ultimately far more gratifying than pompously telling others that the locals are too ignorant to understand your Chinese.

On occasion you will meet a Chinese person shocked into silence by your white face or big nose and thus unable to compute that you might be speaking Chinese. These people are few and far between, though, and using them as an excuse won't get you anywhere with the language.

4. Tones aren't important, most Chinese people don't use them, don't worry about them.

Here's a corollary to point number 3. Because learning tones is time-consuming and difficult, most foreigners try to avoid tackling them altogether and rely solely on context for meaning. They'll listen to rapidly-spoken Mandarin and assume that the tones are one big hoax and that they don't matter to even Chinese people. Others have said that only the first and last tones in a sentence really matter, as the middle is simply a jumble of sounds anyway.

There is an element of truth to this. Often Chinese people will make tonal errors just as in English we often say something incorrect out of habit or convenience. In addition, Chinese in more remote provinces (such as Yunnan) make tonal errors unheard of in more orthodox-Mandarin regions such as China's Northeast. Some beginning students (especially Korean and Japanese ones, I've noticed) obsess over tones and exaggerate each tone to the point of incomprehensible speech.

Just because one shouldn't obsess over tones doesn't mean they're not important. On the contrary, learning them requires far less time and effort than speaking incorrectly and fuming that the Chinese cannot understand you. I have recently begun watching a lot of news on TV and believe me: tones are used.

5. Stroke order is impossibly complicated and makes little difference anyway. There's no reason to learn it.

Stroke order, for the record, refers to the procedure of writing each Chinese character. Many foreigners, even those who have decided to learn how to read, feel intimidated from writing characters by hand due to the perceived difficulty of doing so. In truth, stroke order tends to be logical and it doesn't take much time before you've got it down cold. In fact, I'm usually immediately aware that I've written a character wrong just because it doesn't "feel right".

It's also a myth that stroke order doesn't matter. Chinese people immediately notice when a character has been written improperly and will not hesitate to point it out. Ben, in conversation, once likened stroke order to spelling and I agree that this analogy is most apt. Most educated Americans, for example, recognize instantly when a word is misspelled even though we understand it anyway.

I can say that I would personally feel less sympathetic toward a foreigner who brusquely refused to learn proper English spelling, so why should we expect any different of Chinese people who are regularly told stroke order doesn't matter?

This list is likely incomplete and/or inaccurate, so please contribute any suggestions or modifications in the comments below. Broadly speaking, though, my list serves as a warning to foreigners who think cutting corners will help them learn Chinese faster. The language takes a lot of time, practice, and effort, and while methodical learning might seem boring it really is the easiest and best method for any language, especially Chinese.