LL-L "Language use" 2011.04.11 (04) [EN]

Tue Apr 12 01:49:33 UTC 2011

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L O W L A N D S - L - 11 April 2011 - Volume 04
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From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2011.04.11 (02) [EN]

So you say Chinese, a world language already, is to become dominant even in
places like Surinam. Is it really true that a language with so impractical a
writing is to catch up with or even replace a language so relatively
efficient as English? This seems counter-evolutionary. A regression. A
language with sound-writing is so much more logical! Writing sounds with
just 25 symbols is so plausible, while a great amount of symbols with no
connection to the spoken sounds (you know what I mean) seems double work in
learning -- you have to learn the spoken language plus that more or less
large set of symbols. In fact that set of symbols could be used with other
spoken languages as well, could it? It is quite disjoint, like a spaceship.
I would think the Chinese would themselves wish to reform their writing. Do
they? -- You see I am continually trying to avoid the word "absurd", but I
won't succeed in the long run :-) The whole thing of Chinese becoming so
popular passes my understanding. I cannot believe that a language with such
drawbacks for the learner can really compete with English, especially in our
world of time-shortage and efficiency-worshipping, where everything gets
shortened, trimmed, streamlined and fit. -- Hm, in this light the Chinese
writing seems quite simpatico again, like a last hold of redundancy, like a
peacock's tailfeathers :-)

What are your views, will Chinese continue its winning run?

Hartlich

Marlou

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

Subject: Language use

Hi, Marlou!

There was a time when I would have agreed with you *in toto*. These days I
am no longer so sure. Mostly, however, please let me play the devil’s
advocate here.

*(1)* Impractical? The Chinese script is pictographically based, though many
characters that were developed later do have phonetic references based on
Middle Chinese. By and large, though, the script is “abstract,” so to speak.
In theory at least, you could pretty easily use this script for any other
language. In fact, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese do or did indeed use it,
though with added devices to suit their morphological needs. So you may
argue that the Chinese script, being largely independent of sound, is very
well suited as a *litteratura franca*. To communicate in writing about
contemporarily relevant matters, a person needs to learn a good three
thousand Chinese characters. While this may sound like a lot, I can assure
you on the basis of personal experience that it is not as difficult as it
sounds. (Reading Classical Chinese literature is a different matter,
requiring far more characters and being based on a very different language.)
However, these days many words are *composites* of two or more characters.

*(2)* While you can learn the Chinese script independently from a spoken
language, these days it is paired with and morphosyntactically based on the
Modern Mandarin language. Again, “Chinese” is internationally considered a
very difficult language to learn, and this assumption is largely based on
partial knowledge about the script and about the fact that all Chinese
languages (“dialects”) are tonal (i.e. have phonemic pitch distinction, as
to some degree or other do Indo-European languages such as Panjabi,
Norwegian, Swedish, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian and Limburgish – and these
days Japanese and Korean have been shown to be to some degree tonal (i.e.
bi-tonal), too – not to mention scores of African and American languages).
In reality, the difficulty of both script and tone is wildly exaggerated.
Standard Mandarin has four tones, and they are easy to learn (at least in *
my* experience). Besides, I have met many non-Chinese who did not master the
Mandarin tones and still managed to function at least adequately while
living in China. Furthermore, many of my fellow-students in Beijing were
from various parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia, most of them with no
Chinese studies background and with no particular interest in China either;
yet, most of them were quite fluent after about one year, and among them
many acquired functional Chinese literacy.
Personally, I find Russian—one of the world’s most significant *linguae
francae*—no less challenging than Mandarin, perhaps even more challenging
because of its rather involved phonology and morphology.
Please allow me to add that I am fairly educated about Chinese ethnic and
linguistic minorities, and this includes personal encounters. China has
minorities that speak very different types of languages, such as Tungusic,
Mongolic, Turkic, Tibeto-Burman and Austronesian ones, not to mention a
large Korean minority, as well as smaller communities of speakers of
Indo-European languages (Wakhi, Sarikoli and Russian). Most of their members
these days are proficient in Mandarin as well as in their ancestral
languages, and this is due to them being formally educated as Chinese
citizens and being exposed to Chinese (entirely or including Mandarin).

*(3)* While English is morphologically relatively simple, it makes up for
that in terms of lexicon, idiom and orthography. The English lexicon
contains a very rich accumulation of Germanic-, Romance- and Greek-based
items, many of which at first glance seem synonymous but are in fact not
entirely so, differences being mostly contextual or stylistic. English has
an abundance of idiomatic expressions, complicated by use of the
aforementioned mixture of lexical source material. English orthography is
based on 15th-century language varieties’ pronunciation. While it has
etymological relevance, the average foreign learner of English needs to put
a lot of time and effort into English literacy.

So I’ve thrown this into the discussion as intended food for thought. Please
understand that I do not advocate Chinese world domination (certainly not
under a regime anywhere like that of China *now*).

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron/韓倫（韩伦）

Seattle, USA

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