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| quote: | Originally posted by oje_oje
There is some truth. Consider, please, that China is an empire. You have lots of local languages in there with the official language being "Mandarin" (known to us Westerners as "Chinese"). The situation is much more worse than in Europe where everyone has to learn English as the main European language. In fact, in China a large part of the population does not speak "Mandarin". Okay, then consider there a lot of smart and young people around speaking, reading and writing Mandarin. There is no need for them to learn other languages because China is a world of its own (look at the olympic mascots, that is part of this very different culture). |
This is very true. Indeed, more remote areas have no need to learn Mandarin, and suffice with the local dialect(s).
| quote: | | Then consider that a few students (and nobody else) need to learn english. |
Not quite. The top five languages in demand by employers are roughly English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean. Knowing English is a big deal in China, and it's a required course in many schools.
I once spent time as an intern at NCR Beijing, and English was so important there that they wouldn't hire someone who couldn't speak English.
| quote: | | To make it hard for them they have to learn the western alphabet first (they use a different system). |
Except that the keyboard conversion method in Mainland China uses pinyin, or romanized Chinese. In effect, mainland Chinese are already familiar with the roman alphabet, and the transition is not unlike an American learning the pronunciations of roman letters in German or French, albeit with a big difference that I'll note below.
It's interesting to note that some Chinese use pinyin entirely when using IM programs that do not support Big5 or Unicode or anything like that.
| quote: | | Once they managed to learn it they will need to speak the words they can already read and write. That is the next hurdle because the pronounciation of english words does not follow the way you write them... |
In your interactions with the Chinese in Dresden, did you ever teach them any new English words? If you did, you would have likely noted one or two asking how the word is spelled, then writing the word in the air or on their hand with their forefinger. This is because they want to know what the word looks like, and associate that form with its meaning. The Chinese don't associate pronunciations with individual letters. They look at the word's form as a whole and associate pronunciation and meaning with that form.
This comes directly from the Chinese writing system. Hanzi bear little or no relation to the pronunciations of the words they represent, so it's better to just assoicate the pronunciation and character directly, regardless of constituent elements. This is helpful in English precisely because of the ambiguity of English pronunciation; Chinese don't have to worry about it because they're already used to ambiguity of pronunciation. They just use the same method of learning new words that they've been using. Granted, it's harder to learn the pronunciations of new written words, but that's hard for any English speaker. :P
| quote: | | ...to make it especially difficult, the chinese languages are tonal languages where the way you pronounce the same vocabulary decides whether you name someone "mother" or "horse" (yes, the word for both is the same, it is just the way how to speak the word makes the difference). It is a completely different way to communicate. |
To be honest, this tends to make it harder for foreign learners of Chinese who aren't used to such important suprasegmental distinctions. To the Chinese it's more of one less thing to worry about. Instead they have to focus on the English consonant clusters, which are a bit more complex than the nasal+C that Chinese are used to.
| quote: | | Then consider that they take all hurdles and finally find TA. What do you think, do they understand words (and cultural outflows) such as "orly" "f*ck" "ch00n" and what there is more? I don't think so. |
It's really no different than what a newbie native English speaker would encounter. Hell, I don't know what "orly" means. We really don't use these expressions as much as you seem to be implying.
This doesn't preclude many Chinese not caring enough to learn English well, or not wanting to go to English websites because they're English, though. Even I get discouraged when I see a Chinese website, and I can read Chinese fairly well.
To be honest, TA could possibly be blocked by the Chinese government. (Just look at all of our capitalist propaganda! >_>) Looking around that baidu site, though, I doubt it.
On topic:
啊~，那么可爱，并一点奇怪…
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Last edited by thoughtlessjex on Nov-13-2005 at 02:40
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IF YOU GOT TRANCE IN YOUR PANTS WHIP IT OUT!!! IF NOT JUST WHIP IT OUT ANYWAY!!! 
