English vs. Chinese on BBC
What is the popular view of the Chinese language(s) in English-speaking countries? I’m interested in the answer, but I don’t think I have any good intuition anymore.
And of course there’s not just one answer. The popular view varies depending on where you look. At the Hanzismatter level, the perception is that Chinese is a bunch of mysterious strokes and dots and boxes. On the other hand, lots of folks in more international circles realize at least that Cantonese and Mandarin are different Chinese languages.
But now I’m torn.
I want to like the program. It talks about nuances of Chinese that don’t get much air in the popular English-language media. For instance, it talks about Chinese computer input with Pinyin and about how kids start first grade by learning Pinyin. This is already way more depth than the “Chinese characters communicate meaning directly” kind of nonsense we usually hear.
And because of the subject matter, I’d be happy to ignore the hiccups. They mostly belong to the host anyway, not his guests, who do a nice job of correcting him. For example he says Pinyin is “the creation of one remarkable man” (周有光, Zhōu Yǒuguāng). His guest, Joe Katz of PinyinJoe.com, immediately tells him that Pinyin was created by a committee of which Zhou was part.
But, but… there’s one problem I can’t seem to overlook: What is the program’s overall message? In other words, what message does the average listener (assuming they’re curious but Chinese-naive) leave with?
My one-listen take on it is that they might leave with one of these conclusions:
- Chinese want to use English instead of Chinese
- Chinese are more and more using Pinyin instead of characters
You’ll have to listen to the program to hear why these might be the takeaways, but roughly the arguments sounded to me like this:
- Chinese lacks certain words that are necessary for modern communication, e.g. “presentation”
- Chinese learn Pinyin before characters and require it in school and in typing, etc.
The arguments are either false or trivially true. The conclusions strike me as utterly backwards.
I hope I’m wrong. It’s possible the main message is something more enlightened. Feel free to tell me that. As I said, I only listened to it once through. But if this is roughly right, it’s probably worth another post or two to show why the examples do not support the overall conclusions.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t put so much time into a program that touts the “Global battle between English and Chinese”.
*I’ve also re-recorded the program so you can listen here, not because I want to flout copyright law but because the recording is only supposed to be available online for a limited time. I’ll leave it here until the attorneys tell me to take it off: