Traditional and Simplified
I'm often asked whether I can speak and read Chinese. I usually respond with a simple, "yes, sort of". The real answer, should anyone be so foolish to indulge me, is far more complicated.
First of all, what is meant by Chinese? Many foreigners without experience in the country think of China as having two main languages, Mandarin and Cantonese. They assume both languages exist side-by-side, and so when asked if I can speak Chinese, a follow-up question is often "Mandarin or Cantonese?".
To clear up confusion, what we call "Mandarin" in the West is actually the national language of both the People's Republic and Taiwan. This language developed as a lingua franca of several northern and southwestern dialects and was eventually promoted as the national language in the 20th century. The Chinese refer to it as "common speech" and use of the tongue is mandatory in all schools. Except in remote rural areas, most Han Chinese speak and understand Mandarin and many use it to the exclusion of all other languages.
In addition to Mandarin, countless languages and dialects exist in China. Cantonese is merely the best known of these, due to its use in Hong Kong and in Chinese diaspora communities throughout the world. On the mainland, few people outside of Guangdong Province understand Cantonese.
The vast majority of Chinese dialects and languages belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family, with the main exception being the Turkic Uighur language spoken in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. That being said, a Kunming native would not be able to understand the Shanghai dialect at all, and vice versa. To remedy these gaps in communication, the Chinese government has long insisted Mandarin be exclusively spoken in schools and business settings.
With spoken Chinese out of the way, let's consider the written language. Originally, all Chinese languages (with the notable exception of Tibetan) were rendered in traditional characters. These characters are also widely used in Japan, and once in Korea and Vietnam, too.
In the early years of the People's Republic, Mao Zedong authorized the simplification of many Chinese characters in an effort to boost literacy. He reasoned that traditional characters were too complicated for peasants to learn, and in fact he seriously considered junking characters altogether in favor of an alphabet. For a variety of reasons, characters survived- but not traditional characters.
Simplification was not without its controversies, and several elite critics of Mao's edict found themselves in deep political trouble. Hong Kong and Macao, then controlled by the British and Portuguese respectively, maintained traditional characters, as did Taiwan. Only Singapore adopted Mao's modifications to the written language. These differences persist to this day.
After reform and opening, traditional characters became fashionable on the mainland, and many restaurant signs and advertisements now use them for aesthetic effect. Most educated Chinese have learned to read them, and I suspect that an effort to revert back to the old written system would have much popular support. Citizens in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao have fought to protect traditional Chinese in international settings, as organizations such as the UN adopted simplified characters after recognizing Beijing as China's legitimate government in the 1970s.
If I were running China, I would seriously consider reverting back to exclusive use of traditional characters. After all, there is little evidence that simplification has aided literacy (when controlling for other variables) and little reason to suspect it would. Plus, China's long-term strategic goal is to unify Taiwan under Beijing's control, and projecting an image of "One China" would be easier if the whole of China again used the same script.
Or for purely selfish reasons, it would make those pesky Hong Kong karaoke video subtitles a little easier to read.
On Electronic Chinese-Language Guides
Recently I wrote a comparison of the Chinese learning software Wenlin with the online dictionary Nciku, concluding that each compensated for the other's weaknesses, making both useful. Today my aim is more ambitious: what is the essential combination of web/software/electronic devices for the English speaking Chinese student?
1. Wenlin
As I wrote, Wenlin is best suited for deepening one's understanding of Chinese characters and how they function in the language. I use Wenlin if I encounter a character whose origins I'm unsure of, or am curious in which other words a certain character appears. Wenlin's other main use is for translating paragraphs written in academic or vernacular Chinese, as its ability to render Chinese sentences in accurate English is unsurpassed.
2. Nciku
Nciku's English to Chinese dictionary is far larger than Wenlin's, often providing accurate translations of relatively obscure English terms. Nciku also includes useful example sentences in each of its entries (something Wenlin does only occasionally) which have the unintended effect of improving your grasp of Chinese grammar. Finally, Nciku's writing function recognizes even badly-written characters, so whenever I scribble one with my mouse I always seem to find what I'm looking for.
3. Kingsoft
Unlike Wenlin or Nciku, Kingsoft does not require one to copy and paste Chinese or English terms into a separate interface. Quite simply, Kingsoft will translate any English word it finds on your computer into Chinese, and any Chinese character it finds into English. Note that I said character, not word. One of Kingsoft's weaknesses is that it often fails to pick-up multi-character words, creating a good deal of confusion. Its lack of pinyin on English to Chinese can also be a hindrance if you don't recognize the characters it gives you. Kingsoft is ideal though for IM conversations which value speed over accuracy.
4. Pleco
There are many hand-held dictionary devices, but in my experience Pleco is the best. Available mainly for Palm products, Pleco combines a huge dictionary with an easy-to-use interface, making word searches simple and fast. As a hand-held device, I have used Pleco mostly in class and in situations when I'm outside and am curious about a certain character I see on a sign or shopfront. A must-have for a Chinese student.
Here's a situational guide for each device:
1. You're reading a Chinese newspaper article on-line, but are having trouble with some of the more difficult characters: Wenlin
2. You're understand a Chinese word but are not sure how to use it in a sentence: Nciku
3. You're looking for a ready-made source of Chinese slang: Nciku
4. You're chatting on QQ with your Chinese friend and don't understand a few of the things she's written: Kingsoft
5. The new software you've installed doesn't come in English and you're reluctant to press the wrong button: Kingsoft
6. You're on the bus and are curious about an advertisement that keeps flashing on the screen: Pleco
7. You've seen a certain character before but are not sure what it is, or where else it appears: Wenlin
8. You're reading a Chinese novel at home and can't figure out a tricky phrase: Nciku.
9. You've gotten drunk and lost your Palm PDA, your internet connection expired because you're too lazy to pay the bill, and you are too cheap to buy Kingsoft or Wenlin and too wimpy to download them off of a torrent: a good old-fashioned paper dictionary.
Learning Chinese Through English
Learning Chinese while holding a full-time job here can be very difficult, especially if you're an English teacher. Teachers spend their days immersed in their native language and are often too exhausted to bother studying when they get home. Most schools I've encountered hire an English-speaking liaison to arrange everything for their foreign teachers, minimizing the inconvenience of not being able to speak Chinese. For activities outside of class, eager students often volunteer to help teachers accomplish mundane tasks such as getting a haircut or buying a cellphone. In short, quite a few people manage to get by in China without any Chinese at all.
If you're a teacher and are determined to learn Chinese, there's a handy tool you may not have thought of: listen to your students! Chances are, you'll hear more than your fair share of garbled English during your tenure at the school, and while your first instinct will be to correct your students, it pays to ask yourself why they said what they said. In other words, why do Chinese students make certain mistakes and not others? The clue lies in the Chinese equivalent of the English they speak.
English and Chinese have vast differences in grammar and syntax, and so often ideas do not translate well between the two languages. In China, beginning and intermediate students will often only be able to remember English words and phrases with a clear equivalent in Chinese. After a conversation with one, or a day at school, write down these words and phrases, then look them up in your Chinese-English dictionary. You'll likely find something you'll be able to use in Chinese conversation.
In addition, doing this exercise will aid your teaching skills considerably. You'll be able to pinpoint tricky words and phrases that may not have a direct translation in Chinese and thus be able to explain them to your students. Everyone wins.
I remember sitting in my ESL class four years ago and being told that the standard teaching methodology applies to all students, regardless of their mother tongue. In China, I was told that certain schools prefer hiring teachers who speak no Chinese because then the students will be forced to use English in the classroom. Yet the old show-biz line of "know your audience" works for teaching, too. You won't just be teaching English, you'll be teaching English to Chinese students who live in China and (usually) speak only Chinese and possibly their local dialect. The more you can relate to their language struggles, the more your own will be alleviated.
Nciku and Wenlin
Months ago a friend e-mailed me and recommended a new online Chinese-English dictionary called Nciku, suggesting that I use it in tandem with the venerable dictionary software Wenlin. I wisely took his advice and can say that both tools have drastically improved my understanding and appreciation of Chinese characters. In fact, they complement each other rather well: each has its strengths and weaknesses.
With Wenlin, you have the option of pasting Chinese text in a new window and acquiring the meaning of every word or phrase you encounter. Should one character arouse your interest, you can click on it and Wenlin will tell you its definition, origin, use in other words, stroke order, and so on. I often lose myself happily going from character to character in a long chain, not unlike how one Wikipedia article can easily lead to fifteen others. Wenlin, like Wikipedia, is a true intellectual pleasure even aside from its practical uses as a dictionary. Not only do you learn the individual characters themselves, but also the way in which characters and words work in the Chinese language.
However, Wenlin does have its drawbacks. It's English to Chinese database is relatively small, and its recognition of characters "drawn" with a mouse often doesn't work. Also, as a software program, Wenlin isn't flexible- unless you regularly purchase and download upgrades, the software cannot improve upon itself by incorporating new features or expanding its dictionaries. Wenlin works great if you paste an article from a newspaper, but less well if you try to understand what your Chinese friend writes on her blog.
Fortunately, where Wenlin falls short, Nciku pulls through. The latter is a website and so constantly evolves by adding new features, expressions, and words. Better yet: it's completely free. Nciku's English to Chinese dictionary is thorough and modern: recently I searched "PDA" and learned the Chinese terms for both Personal Digital Assistant (个人数å—助ç†) and Public Display of Affection (当众示爱). Nciku also allows users to comment, critique, and correct dictionary entries or set up study guides of their own. And did I mention it's free?
Nciku's best feature is its character recognition. Whenever one begins to write a character in an enclosed box, Nciku immediately comes up with about twenty-five different estimates as you go along. This is convenient because certain multi-stroke characters are difficult to draw with a computer mouse and so often I'll find what I'm looking for even before I finish. For more on this innovative tool, checkout this Sinosplice post from last year .
Alas, with Nciku you can't simply click on a character and learn more about it, so that's where Wenlin comes in. If I encounter an unfamiliar character, I first begin by drawing it with my mouse on Nciku's grid, obtain its meaning and pronunciation, and then plug it into Wenlin to find out its use in other words as well as its stroke order. By the end of this process, which takes less than two minutes, I'll have learned quite a bit about multiple words and am likelier to remember them.
For those of you learning Chinese or even just curious about how Chinese works, Wenlin and Nciku go a long way toward unraveling the language's many mysteries.
China Insights From Ross Perot
Buried at the end of this amusing article about Ross Perot, the man most responsible for Bill Clinton's election in 1992, came this nugget about China:
He attributes the success of China to the fact that even uneducated Chinese must learn 3,000 characters early in life, compared to the 26 letters in the English alphabet. "Their hand-eye productivity is incredible because of drawing the symbols," Perot says
Take that, Chairman Mao!
(link via Hit & Run)
Chinglish Vs. Bad Tattoos
During dinner with some old high school friends the other night, one who had recently visited China suggested that I start a business correcting all of the flawed English seen throughout the country. This was my cue, of course, to say that I believe Chinglish (English with Chinese characteristics) has its own intrinsic humor value and shouldn't be eliminated. I then entertained the party with a few of my favorite examples of the genre.
Then, someone mentioned something I hadn't thought of. He said, "Chinglish isn't nearly as bad as people who get bad Chinese tattoos here". Whih, of course, is true- Chinese people must get a kick out of foreigners getting unfortunate Chinese characters permanently inked on their body. There's even a website, called Hanzi Smatter, which tracks these linguistic unforced errors for us. Here's one from a librarians back, which reads "to pay for love". Somehow I doubt this is what she intended when she walked into the parlor that day:
Chinglish on clothes and even on advertisements at least have the benefit of being temporary. Bad Chinese tattoos? Not so much. Ouch.
Words Fail Me (And You)
My old WITT colleague John tells us one of his IELTS students asked him how many English words he'd need to know to study the language in university. John, naturally, didn't have the answer, as if there was one at all. Professional linguists could probably cite a ballpark figure, but what use would that be? Learning a foreign language is much more than memorizing a dictionary.
John's story is all too familiar to anyone who has taught English in China. In Fuzhou, one of my more precocious students used to spend class looking up word after word in her electronic dictionary. Several others told me that my emphasis on fluency was not particularly helpful, and what they really wanted to learn was pure vocabulary.
As a result, quite a few Chinese friends of mine have developed an expansive vocabulary in English, yet struggle to communicate effectively in the language. Ironically, this makes my own acquisition of Mandarin easier, as often in conversation I'm able to rely on the internal dictionary of my partners to fill in gaps of my own vocabulary. Yet for those Chinese wishing to use English as a marketable skill, a lack of fluency is a significant flaw.
Why is English instruction in China tailored this way? Several possible explanations spring to mind. For one, the vast majority of English teachers in China have spent little to no time abroad honing their craft. The Chinese government recognizes this problem and has thus made a major push of bringing in native speakers (like yours truly) to help the nation's youth learn the language properly. Yet I think it's safe to assume that many, many Chinese people have never encountered a native English speaker in person.
Secondly, in Chinese classrooms there is very little interaction between the teachers and students. In most cases, teachers prepare a lecture based on a textbook and students quietly write notes, not unlike the structure in American universities. This method works well in certain subjects, but when applied in language classes the results are disastrous. How are Chinese students expected to learn how to speak English if they're not wanted to speak at all?
Third, the Chinese education system places a strong emphasis on rote learning, and in language class this means memorizing words and grammatical concepts rather than interacting with the spoken language. My Chinese English teaching colleagues, for instance, understood English grammar far better than I and were shocked when I was unfamiliar with various arcane grammatical details. Yet even many of them had difficulties conducting a conversation in fluent English.
In spite of these hurdles, more than a few Chinese people I know managed to become very fluent English speakers without having lived abroad. A principle factor, interestingly enough, is the wide availability of pirated English-language DVDs. Others improved with the aid of a foreign boyfriend or girlfriend, and many in the larger cities benefited from integrating into the expat community. These people to me represent the best of Chinese ingenuity.
This problem, of course, exists elsewhere. Most adult Americans remember next to nothing from their high school language classes. At my own high school, a prestigious prep school located in the cosmopolitan Bay Area, very few of the foreign language instructors were native speakers. Compared to Chinese people, Americans have a far easier time traveling and living overseas, yet the vast majority of us remain happily monolingual.
Yet I still believe that the Chinese method of teaching English ought to be reconsidered, and if there is one good thing foreign teachers can do, it is to introduce a different emphasis to the students we teach.
Accents and such
In the past year or so, people have told me that I have a weird accent. The change, I guess, was subtle- so subtle that I myself didn't notice it. Yet at least one out of every three new people I meet look surprised when I say that I'm Californian, born and raised. I occasionally sense a sneaking suspicion on the part of others that somehow I'm such a pretentious phony that I have ditched my normal accent for something new and improved.
It isn't hard to understand why, if anything, my accent has changed. Until I came to China, the vast majority of my English-speaking friends were Americans. The vast majority of them, in turn, were Californians who putatively shared my accent, so there were no so-called evolutionary pressures on me to alter the way I speak.
In China, though, I've worked and hung out with a diverse group of people from all over the Anglophone world. I've become good friends with New Zealanders, Australians, Canadians, Englishmen, Scots, and have had plenty of contact with South Africans, Irishmen, Welshmen, and virtually every other type of English-native speaker in the world. In the beginning, I encountered some comprehension problems; words like "pissed" and "loo" and "rooted" totally escaped me. I also hadn't been used to the substitution of "a bit" for "a little" and "quite" for "pretty".
After three years, you can imagine that I've figured out most of these; and in fact, I've even adapted a few myself. I like "queuing". "Standing in line" now sounds a little strange. I always flinch a little when an American says "pissed" to mean angry, even though this was the only usage of the word I knew for most of my life. Funny, that.
I've held on to some Americanisms. Whenever one from the UK or commonwealth says "torch" I think of a medieval European monks wandering in castles rather than flashlights. And I won't stop saying "sure", whether as an affirmative "Can I borrow a pen?" "Sure!" or an emphatic "I sure am!" And while an ass is indeed a donkey, it also is a rear end, and "arse", well, isn't anything at all.
My Kiwi, Aussie, and English friends haven't picked up nearly as much American English, which I would say results from having been bombarded with American media their whole lives. American slang and usage just isn't as interesting to them as theirs is to us, for they're heard it all before. A pity but understandable.
Well...it's off to the loo before hitting the sack. I'm right knackered, mate.
It’s The Language, Stupid
This post at Coming Anarchy, discussing whether linguistic fluency is required to be a regional expert, reminds me of a story I recently heard from John, an American friend of mine who first visited mainland China in 1986.
John learned Chinese in Taiwan years before, so he found his experience there (confined to Beijing and Xi'an) interesting and not unpleasant. At the time, few signs were translated into English (or even in pinyin) and few Chinese were conversant in the language. Most Chinese were even less used to foreigners than they are today, so as a result several of the non-Chinese speaking foreigners John encountered described their experience as a nightmare. He gave one example that strikes me as a perfect illustration of how not understanding Chinese makes life difficult here.
In the Xi'an train station, passengers formed two lines depending on their destination. These lines were clearly labeled in Chinese but not at all translated into English. A foreign man spent forty-five minutes waiting in a line that turned out to be wrong; when he got to the ticket booth, he was informed that he had to go into the other line. He, understandably, blew up in frustration. Yet his problem would have easily been averted if he only understood written Chinese.
These days, life in China is much easier for those unable to speak the language. I would wager, though, that every newbie in China has had moments similar to the poor gentleman in John's story. I've certainly had my fair share of headaches, intemperate outbursts, and extremely frustrating experiences in my three years in China. With very few exceptions, all were caused by my inability to speak and understand Chinese.
Chinese is worth studying for a lot of reasons, but not having to deal with hassles is one of the best.
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 è¯ (hua4), which means "talk" or "speech", the Chinese word for "telephone", ç”µè¯ (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 è„‘ (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 æ—±é¸å (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.