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THE CHINESE LANGUAGE and its alleged difficulty
written by
QI Lubao Dip TESL (Victoria University of
Wellington)
ISSN 1174-4820
ISBN: 1-877209-19-8
Printed copies in brochure format are obtainable from the centre
publications, email
Summary
'1 Introduction
'2 The Chinese Alanguage@ or Alanguages@?
'3 How difficult are the tones in Chinese?
'4 Is Chinese really a picture language?
'5 How many characters must one learn?
'6 Easy aspects of learning Chinese
'7 Conclusion
'8 Bibliography
'1 Introduction
Archaeological discoveries enable us to trace the origin of the Chinese written language back some six thousand years to as early as 4000 BC. Proven evidence of early writing comes in the form of over 3000 different inscriptions on some 160,000 pieces of bone and tortoise shells, dating from between the 16th and the 11th centuries BC. These show that the present-day characters are directly descended from the early inscriptions. Thus the Chinese writing system is a kind of living fossil, for the characters are not only a part of an ancient writing system, but are also the essential components of a contemporary writing system.
Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China, including Hong Kong, and of Taiwan. It is one of the official languages of Singapore, and is also extensively used in Malaysia. The language is shared by Chinese communities all over the world, and is also one of the five working languages of the United Nations. Moreover, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are three dynamic regions in the Asian economy, while the economy of China itself, booming since the early eighties, looks set to become one of the more important economies of the coming millenium. Access to up-to-date first-hand information about the Chinese-speaking areas of the world is thus becoming increasingly important.
Although the dominant language of the worldwide web is still English, the number of web sites written in Chinese has risen spectacularly in recent years, as can be readily seen from the increasingly sites on the web in Chinese..
The importance of Chinese today and in the near future has become self-evident to many people outside China, and should have provided an incentive for them to take up the study of Chinese. It is true that Chinese is now taught and studied as a foreign language more than ever before. This should be a cause for celebration, but, if we look more closely, we cannot but be saddened by the many obstacles that lie in the path of those wishing to take up the study of the language.
In New Zealand, the teaching of Chinese began at Auckland University as early as the fifties, and at Victoria University in the sixties. Although it has reached an unprecedented level today, the absolute number of students of Chinese is still very low compared with the numbers studying other international languages such as Japanese and French. The number of students of Chinese is out of all proportion to the spread and the importance of the language in the world today. There are many reasons for this.
In the past, for instance, the political and economic situation in China was unfavourable to the spread of the teaching of Chinese in the West. But apart from this, misunderstandings, misconceptions, and misinformation about the language have been spread by many European writers, in both popular and academic works. This has created a huge body of traditional myths about the Chinese language and its alleged difficulty, so that even now, many of those who realise the importance of the language today, are put off from making any real attempt to learn the language.
Among these misunderstandings is the belief that Chinese is not just one language, but a whole group of mutually unintelligible languages. Would-be learners must first decide which and how many of these Alanguages@ to try to learn. They are then discouraged by being told that the tonal system of Chinese is unique, and is difficult for a foreigner without a musical ear to grasp, and are warned of the terrible consequences that a mistake in intonation can cause. This is bad enough, but would-be learners are then told further that since the written language has no phonetic alphabet, so that to express ideas, the language has to resort to hundreds of thousands of pictures, all of which have to be memorised before the language can be mastered. Estimates of 125,000 such pictures, and even higher have been talked about.
As a result of these myths and misunderstandings, Chinese has acquired in the West the reputation of being one of the most difficult languages in the world. And so students who feel that they are skilled neither in music nor in drawing, and know that they do not have the prodigious memory required for memorising hundreds of thousands of different pictures, are discouraged from even trying to study Chinese, and so choose an Aeasier@ language such as Japanese or Russian instead. The situation is made worse, when educational administrators, misled by the current myths, oppose introducing the teaching of Chinese into schools, on the grounds that such a difficult language should be studied only by a few of the most gifted students.
This essay examines the major reasons given for the alleged difficulty of Chinese, many of which date back to the nineteenth century, and are based on wrong information, false logic or both. Also discussed is when and why these ideas began to be propagated, and why they persist to this very day.
'2 The Chinese Alanguage@ or Alanguages@?
To learn and master even one foreign language is not easy. It is not surprising then, that many would-be learners of Chinese are put off from even trying when they are told by so many seemingly impeccable sources, that Chinese is not just one language, but a whole group of mutually unintelligible languages.
What practical benefit, they wonder, could possibly repay the time and effort that seems to be needed for learning even one of these languages? And with which of these allegedly mutually unintelligible languages should they begin?
The idea that Chinese is not a single language is spread by a host of books and encyclopaedias, too numerous to list, which tell children for example that Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages as distinct as French and German. This is totally misleading, since French and German do not even belong to the same language group.
But it is not only children who are misled. A recent Minister of Education called for the teaching of Cantonese as one of the foreign languages to be taught in New Zealand schools, and a report on Chinese to the Asia Foundation deplored the fact that formal courses in Cantonese are not yet taught at a single one of our Universities or Polytechnics. This is like deploring the fact that Brummie is not yet taught at any Chinese tertiary institution, even though Birmingham is one of the most important cultural and economic regions of the United Kingdom.
Unfortunately, the idea that Chinese is not just one language, is also spread by authoritative works published overseas such as The Oxford Companion to the English language, the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia, the Encyclopaedia Britannica - Micropaedia, and the Far Eastern Economic Review - All Asia Travel Guide, to name only a few. In New Zealand, an essay on AThe maintenance of Chinese languages in New Zealand@, appears in the collection, edited by Walter Hirsch, entitled: Living Languages: Bilingualism, Community Languages in New Zealand.
Under the heading Chinese, we read in the Oxford Companion to the English Language, that:
AAlthough Chinese is generally treated as a single language of the Sino-Tibetan family, it is more accurately described as a group of mutually unintelligible (though grammatically similar) languages that employ the same non-phonetic writing system.@
Unfortunately Amutual unintelligibility@ is a subjective concept, for which an objective scientific measure would be difficult to find.
If Chinese dialects were as mutually unintelligible as is so often claimed, TV and radio comedy programmes which exploit dialect differences would not be as popular in China or Singapore as they are. And Chinese-speakers from Shanghai would not be able to adapt themselves to the life and speech of Hong Kong as rapidly as they do, or indeed as they did in the early fifties, when the rapid economic development of Hong Kong took place as a result of wealthy Shanghai entrepreneurs and their families flooding into Hong Kong.
The Hutchinson Encyclopaedia describes Chinese as, Adepending upon definition, a language or group of languages@.
Definition really is the crux of the matter. When we talk of the Chinese language, we are in general talking about the language of the largest single ethnic group in China, the Han people. The Webster Comprehensive Dictionary, defines a language as consisting of
Athe words forming the means of communication of a single nation or group at a given period@,
and even the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia explains it as Athe systematic, conventional use of sounds, symbols or written symbols in a human society for communication and self-expression@.
In these definitions, what we call a Alanguage@ is based mainly on social, cultural, economic and/or political considerations. Scholars who base their definition on the subjective concept of Amutual intelligibility@ are in effect denying the cultural unity of the Han people. Such scholars seem to be in the majority, yet many of them do not seem to be very fluent in either standard Chinese or one of its dialects, and their opinions depend on their judgement of the reliability of what they have been told by their informants.
Yet there are so many such scholars that they are extremely influential in dissuading non-Chinese from learning Chinese. The conflict between the Ascholar's@ and the ordinary person's perception of what makes a Alanguage@ is further seen in David Crystal's Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Language and Languages, where Chinese is defined as:
Aa group of languages traditionally called >dialects=@,
with the added explanation that:
Aa tradition has grown up of referring to the eight main varieties of speech in China as >dialects=, though they are mutually unintelligible, and thus best thought of as different languages.@
The 1992 edition of the Micropaedia of the Encyclopaedia Britannica agrees when it writes that:
AChinese exists in a number of varieties that are popularly called dialects but are usually classified as separate languages by scholars.@
The Webster Comprehensive Dictionary first defines Chinese as Athe standard language of China@, before changing its mind to explain that it is:
AA sub-family of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, including many languages and dialects spoken in China@.
Cantonese, A Complete Course for Beginners informs its readers that:
ACantonese, like all the Chinese languages, is written in characters@,
while the Far Eastern Economic Review - All Asia Travel Guide tells us that:
APutonghua is replacing other Chinese languages in official usage and as the medium of instruction in schools and most broadcasting@,
but states that:
Anothing but Chinese languages are usually spoken in the street.@
In the face of such unanimity by non-Chinese observers, how can any would-be learner possibly have any doubts about the assertion by Ascholars@ that Chinese is not a language but a group of mutually unintelligible languages?
If we insist on talking about the Chinese languages, instead of the Chinese language, then we should also talk of the English languages, rather than the English language, of the Spanish languages rather than the Spanish language, or of the Arabic languages rather than of Arabic. There is no doubt that the Chinese language has many different dialects spoken in different areas of China and by Chinese communities in different parts of the world.
But this is equally true of English. The term AEnglish@ is used, regardless of whether we are talking about British, American, Indian, South African, or even New Zealand English; whether we are talking about the Queen=s English, upper-class or lower-class English; Cockney, Brummie, Brooklynese, or some other dialect.
Nor are all these forms intelligible to all speakers of English. A Cockney from London and an American from Brooklyn speaking their native dialects of English may have difficulties in mutual comprehension, but they are not speaking different languages. We do not talk about the English languages, because the speakers of these diverse varieties of English share a common cultural heritage in their literature, history and ways of thinking and behaviour. In the same way, the Chinese language is a reflection of the cultural unity of the Han people. Chinese is today the language of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is widely used in Malaysia and in overseas Chinese communities all over the world.
Cantonese dialect, not the Cantonese language, is the predominant form of speech used in the Guangdong area including Hong Kong. Similarly, Shanghai dialect is widely used in the Shanghai region, Beijing dialect in Beijing and so on. All educated speakers in these dialect regions read and write the same standard Chinese, just as all educated speakers of English dialects read and write in standard English. Although the dialects differ from standard Chinese in pronunciation, in some choices of vocabulary and in some points of grammatical structure, this does not warrant classifying them as different languages. All speakers of Cantonese and other non-standard dialects share the same Chinese history, philosophy and religion, art and literature. None of them would consider themselves to be less Chinese than the speakers of the various Mandarin dialects.
Chinese already has the undeserved reputation for being one of the most difficult languages in existence, and after reading the almost unanimous views of the many non-Chinese linguistics Ascholars@, many of those who are thinking of taking up the study of a foreign language will surely think more than twice, before even considering putting Chinese on their short-list.
In New Zealand, when we talk about the English language, we do not usually specify what particular variety of English we are talking about, if this is clear from the context. In the same way, the term AChinese@ in English normally means Astandard Chinese@ or Amodern standard Chinese@, but the qualifiers are not necessary unless we are making a contrast between standard Chinese and some other variety of Chinese such as Cantonese or classical Chinese. AModern standard Chinese@ is an English term used by specialists in linguistics since the 1950s. The spoken form of Amodern standard Chinese@ is known in Chinese as either Hanyu or Putonghua on the mainland, Guoyu in Taiwan, and Huayu in Singapore. The terms AChinese@, Amodern Chinese, or Amodern standard Chinese@, refer to both the written and the spoken forms of the single language which reflects the cultural unity of the Han people, and is the medium for passing on their civilisation and culture.
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This page last revised: 25th December, 2000