[EDLING:2255] Mandarin and Cantonese become more popular in U.K. classrooms

[fmhult at DOLPHIN.UPENN.EDU]

		OhMyNews	 2007.1.18	 	
	
	
	
	 <http://eng.ohmynews.com> 	 		
	
			
		≫ This article is that Francis Hult send to you.
Hey Brits, Learn Some Chinese
<http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=340
261&rel_no=1> 	 
Mandarin and Cantonese become more popular in U.K. classrooms	 
	
Max Lin  	 
	
Nearly 10 Londoners of different ethnic backgrounds are gazing at a
Chinese martial artist on the screen. They fix their ears on the
Mandarin he is speaking, eyes on the subtitle of Chinese characters,
giving every effort to grasp the story of this film. Learning a strange
oriental language is no easy business.

This is an event held in a small auditorium of the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London, which has one of the largest
Chinese classes in Britain. The number of Chinese learners in the U.K.
is increasing rapidly, according to the National Centre for Languages,
as the figure has more than doubled over the past six years. 

Compared to the learners of other European languages, such as French and
German, Chinese learners are still relatively few. But things are
changing fast. Nearly one in five independent secondary schools in
England now offer Chinese lessons, while the government promises that
state schools will catch up soon. 

Chancellor Gordon Brown has even said he wants every school, college and
university to be twinned with an equivalent in China in the near future.

So what is this Chinese fuss about? Mainly it is because that China is
the world's fastest growing major economy, and knowing Chinese could
mean more business opportunities. Also, the Greater China area,
including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, generates a
fortune of trillions of pounds annually and attracts loads of investment
from British companies. U.K. exports to China are expected to quadruple
by 2010.

But Britons do not learn this language only for business-related
reasons. Angela Liang, a Chinese teacher of SOAS Language Centre, says:
"It is true that many people learn Chinese for they want to work as
traders in China. However, some students come here mostly because they
hope to understand the culture or to talk to their relatives and friends
in Chinese."

Charles Smith, a white Briton who has been learning Chinese for three
years, says that in the beginning he just wanted to please his
girlfriend from southern China and to talk to her in her mother tongue.
It seems to work out pretty well for Smith, as his girlfriend then is
his fiancee now.

He adds: "Learning Chinese helps me to communicate with my fiancee, and
vice versa. Her English is much better than my Chinese, so we spend
hours talking in her language. That improves our relationship as well as
my Chinese."

"I enjoy the process [of learning], because it's not just about going to
classes and memorizing vocabulary. I learn by absorbing in the culture,
going to Chinese restaurants, seeing Chinese films with my Chinese
fiancee. I hope one day I can talk to her family members in Cantonese,
because it is the only language they know how to speak."

Smith is a rare case in that he learns Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese at
the same time. Chinese is hard for many Westerners partly because it not
only has two types of writing systems, both in ideograms, but also has
tens of dialects. Mandarin is China's official language and spoken by
most Chinese, but Cantonese and Hokkien, two dialects in southern China,
are also in common use.

For Louise Yung, a Briton of Hong Kong origin, to learn Chinese is a
matter of both tracing her parents' culture and exploring career
opportunities. Yung says: "I moved from Hong Kong to Britain at a very
young age, so I don't really remember how to speak the language. My
parents used to try to talk to me in Cantonese, but I could only answer
in English."

Language learners usually find writing and reading is rather more
difficult than listening and speaking, and Yung is no exception. She
finds the conversation skills are easy to pick up, because she has
spoken with her parents in Chinese at home, but when writing she feels
that Chinese characters all look "the same."

"They are composed of so many strange, twisting strokes. When I get one
stroke wrong, the character could have a very different meaning. I will
need to spend a lot of time on it."

Her family plans to move back to China in the future, and Yung has not
decided on whether she will stay in Britain or not. Either way, she
thinks these language skills can be useful, for they can help her
"understand more about China and land better jobs" later on.

Indeed, improving job prospects is another strong reason for the British
to spend a lot of time learning this difficult language. Many lawyers
and diplomats need to study Mandarin nowadays, and professionals like
them usually enroll in some intensive Chinese programmes.

In the SOAS Language Centre, they need to spend five hours a day and
five days a week in classes. If these professionals do well, they
usually will be competent in listening, speaking, reading and writing in
one year's time. This means that they will have the necessary language
skills to work in their multinational firms in China.

Normal students, if they just want to manage some Chinese conversation
skills, do not need to work that hard. Charles Cheuk, another Chinese
teacher of SOAS, says that if the students only want to know some
Mandarin to backpack in China, they just need to take a two-hour lesson
per week for six months, but "preparing schoolwork in advance is a
must."

The difficult part comes from that, linguistically, Chinese and English
have very little in common. Compared to English, Chinese has relatively
loose grammar and its usage relies on conventions much more. Cheuk
explains: "All Chinese words have only one grammatical form, so unlike
English, you don't have to worry about conjugations."

"But because there are no specific rules, its syntax sometimes can be
very complicated. Moreover, one Chinese character has four tones in
Mandarin, six tones in Cantonese, and each tone represents an individual
meaning originating from different cultural contexts. If you get it
wrong, you could pronounce 'mother' as 'horse' or 'scold.'"

Johnny, a British Indian who began to learn Mandarin four months ago,
also finds that the logic of Chinese is very different. "I can use
Chinese to express things more directly than English," he claims. "One
simple Chinese character can have several different meanings in English,
so I don't have to say as many words."

But the hard part also lies there. Johnny learns Chinese through
English, and he thinks it is very difficult for him to construct Chinese
sentences, even simple ones. "I will view it as a cultural challenge I
have to overcome," he says.

Johnny works as a software engineer, and he thinks his time and money
spent on learning Chinese will pay off in the long run. "My company is
expanding in China. I hope by talking the language of my potential
client, I can capture more business opportunities."

According to David Graddol, a language researcher, Johnny is taking a
step in the right direction. Graddol has said in several reports that
employers in parts of Asia are already looking beyond English, and in
the next decade, the most important language to learn for career
opportunities is likely to be Mandarin.

His theory is that while Mandarin is the most common native tongue, it
has relatively few second language speakers, compared to English.
Therefore, as English has become basic literacy for students all over
the world, managing Mandarin can put one at a competitive advantage.

Graddol also has anticipated that, in 2050, the share of native speakers
of English will slip from 9 percent to 5 percent. And, although more and
more people are learning it as a second language, English may still not
be most widely spoken in the world, since more than 1 billion people are
native Chinese speakers and many others are trying to manage Mandarin to
make money in China.

In response to the scholar's call, Chinese learning resources in Britain
are increasing. 

The BBC is offering basic Chinese courses online; many universities are
providing Chinese classes, some are even teaching dialects; the number
of community schools giving Chinese lectures is also growing. However,
some politicians are even willing to take it further.

Ken Livingston, the Mayor of London, once told the press: "To try and
learn Mandarin when you're 12 or 13 is not easy. We need
Mandarin-speaking teachers in our primary schools for kids of six or
seven." He plans to offer Mandarin lessons to children at primary
schools, noting that it could help attract Chinese investors and
tourists to the capital in the future.

It is not certain how good one's Chinese has to be to share in the
country's economic growth. What is more certain, though, is that
learning this language can help the British make more Chinese friends,
and understand the Eastern world. 

2007/01/16 p.m2:32 	
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