Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The BS-Wrestling Pit => Topic started by: Pashley on June 14, 2014, 08:49:46 AM
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Business Week on changing Chinese gov't attitude & policy:
http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/china-moves-to-protect-its-language-from-english
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Interesting on several levels. This Chinese tendency to equate English with "Western" [whatever that means] lives on. I think they mean American, as that country accounts for the majority of the world's 375 million native speakers. Trying to deny the language's role as a lingua franca is swimming against the tide. And wasn't it Mao who proposed replacing Hanzi with Pinyin? If there was less English "taught" in the Chinese system, but it was compensated for by being better taught then there might be some progress in both languages.
Probably best to follow the example of the Japanese, who use loan words galore but manage to maintain cultural integrity.
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Interesting article, it would worthy to note if this is a trend or political rhetoric manufactured by the Cute Cow People.
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Remember the old days of "catch every chance"? No one says that anymore. The rhetoric back then was of modernization. I think probably they did modernize, and here we are. The country has sucked up a gutfull of technology and built its factories, and now the tools of this transfer of wealth have changed. It used to be "English". But that was before they got good at IP theft online.
I don't think actually the fact all the technology they want is networked is exactly what's driving the decline in English. But locally those who wanted to gain expertise are near to having done so. The role of the foreign expert is pretty much done so why not phase out English too? Modernize probably never did mean internationalize.