LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.07.26 (02) [A/E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 26 July 2006 * Volume 02
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From: 'Ria Noome' <ria.noome at deneloptronics.co.za>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.07.25 (09) [A/E]

Marcel
My surname is nor Afrikaans nor Dutch its Belguim. Merci for the radio France
link I will go there definately.
Ja, die Karoo sing die mense van maar sover ek weet is daar nie veel nie, ek moet
erken ek was nog nooit in my lewe daar nie so ek kan nie se nie maar soos ek
verstaan is dit maar vlaktes maar ek dink daar is baie mooi natuurskoon om te
sien soos in die Namakwaland wat die blomme het en ook die mooi natuurskoon. Die
Kaap het nou weer baie ou geboue nou nie soos in Europe nie maar dit wat die Kaap
het en selfs hier by ons in Pretoria(Gauteng) het ons sekere ou geboue en selfs
hier by ons in Centurion, Irene is Jannie Smuts se huis - hy was mos ons
President jare terug - en sy huis kan n mens gaan na kyk.
Ja, die weer is eintlik nou heerlik nie te warm of te koud nie maar n mens kan
regtig voel die somer is oppad. In die oggende en die aande is dit koud maar in
die dag is dit heerlik.
Lekker kuier en geniet die Karoo. Laat weet hoe jy die Karoo gevind het.
Groete uit SA
ria

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency'

Beste Ron,

You wrote:

> Well, well ... "everybody" may be a bit of an overstatement, a generalization
> that I assume is based on your personal experiences in China (a bit after 2000,
> if I remember correctly). Bear in mind that as a foreigner you (1) mostly move
> around large cities (and tend to be ... uh ... "guided" when you visit the
> countryside), (2) frequent places (including schools) where "with-it" folks and
> the select few hang out (such as the few that pass university entrance exams),
> and (3) attract seemingly xenophiles types, many of whom will follow you around
> ("I want to converse in English with you."). These are not necessarily
> representative.
Surely I've never been in a position to check if all of the 1.3 billion
Chinese people were able (and willing!) to speak anything else than
their native language, but what I did find out is that most of them were
not expecting me to speak their own lingo.

Regarding your first two arguments, I'd like to remark that in 2002, I
also crossed the country by bike (from Xian to Laos). Yes, under my own
steam *s*...so most of the time I was out there in the countryside, all
by myself, mastering a mere 300 words or so. This never posed any
problems in terms of finding accommodation and food, but it struck me
that even in the remotest villages you could often find people that
spoke some English (or Russian!). There's definitely a divide between
cities and the countryside, young people and older people, but I find
this linguistic gap to be substantially smaller than the oft-mentioned
cultural schism.

What I'm actually trying to point out is that the outcome of any
language survey depends very much on how you conduct it, and by
experience I discovered that a situation where a foreigner turns up, out
of the blue, on a heavily laden bike often brought out the best (and
sometimes the worst) in the local populace. Maybe because I was viewed
as some kind of harmless, exotic animal on the loose...I can live with
that *s*. Methinks, keeping a low profile is key if ever you want to
find out how well somebody can speak a foreign language...even more so
in China, where the fear to make mistakes (of many sorts) still reigns
supreme.

At the same time, many people are dead curious. This curiosity is partly
met by the government, judging an article in "Wired" I read a couple of
years ago. Dealing with global Internet penetration, it said the Chinese
government was organizing free Internet courses for elderly people, and
regularly 80+ year old folks would show up, sometimes hunchbacked and
with a walking stick, but always genuinely interested. Frankly, here in
Belgium, I don't see this happen any time soon.
But then again, maybe older Belgians have more faith in their national
broadcasting system than the Chinese do *s*.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language proficiency

Hi, Luc!

Obviously a lot changed in Chinese between the early 1980s and the time you were
there.  Why, they even changed drastically during my own stint. The first half
was dominated by the tone of the Cultural Revolution (yes, complete with
"struggling" of people with "deviant thinking," and also with a silent-treatment
reeducation period for me after having voiced a personal opinion), and the second
half was dominated by the "Four Modernizations" campaign.  During the first half
people would try to locate you to give you back the wallet (with all its
contents) you dropped, and during the second half you needed at least three
heavy-duty lock chains for your bicycle.  While in pushy Shanghai hundreds of
education-hungry whipper-snappers would hunt you down to practice with you
whatever foreign language (even with "exotic" choices such as Italian, Dutch or
Icelandic), in country towns and even in less visited large cities hundreds of
people at a time would pursue you silently with open-mouthed stares.  Especially
during the early days, much of what I then interpreted as indifference regarding
anything foreign may well have been politically correct pretence, especially if
anyone was within earshot that could have been a functionary.  At that time it
was in real terms neither kosher nor safe, albeit not actually illegal anymore,
to talk with foreigners, and most people were still quite afraid.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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