Monthly Archives: February 2008

Results of US AP exams: first year for Mandarin, Japanese

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2007 was the first year that the U.S. College Board offered an Advanced Placement (AP) exam for “Chinese Language and Culture.” It was also the first year students could take an AP exam in “Japanese Language and Culture.”

Data for the results as a whole have just been released. The figures for Mandarin are remarkably lopsided.

A total of 81.1 percent of those taking the exam for Mandarin and Chinese culture achieved the top score of 5, a much higher percentage than with any other test. The subject with the second highest percentage of 5’s was Japanese (43.4 percent), followed by Electricity and Magnetism (33.8 percent), Mechanics (26.1 percent), and German (24.4 percent). In most other subjects a score of 5 was achieved by only about 10 percent to 20 percent of test takers.

Let’s look at those who achieved only the lowest score (1). Here, too, Mandarin stands out, with by far the lowest percentage of test takers with this score (1.5 percent). Next are Drawing, 2-D Design, and 3-D Design (5.8 percent); English Language and Composition (10.9 percent); and Calculus BC (13.5 percent). Most subjects have “1” rates in the 20s.

Comparison of Scores Across Language Exams
chart comparing how well test takers did in various language exams, with scores for 'Chinese' being far higher than all others; languages listed: Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Spanish

Comparison of Lowest Scores Across Language Exams
comparing percentages of test takers receiving the low score of '1', with all languages other than Mandarin falling above 13% -- Mandarin at a mere 1.5%

So, does this indicate Mandarin isn’t damn hard for students after all or that the perfect pedagogy for this subject has been reached? Of course not.

Only 11.1 percent of the 3,260 people taking the Mandarin exam did not indicate on their test that they “regularly speak or hear the foreign language of the examination at home, or that they have lived for one month or more in a country where the language is spoken.”

Percent of test takers who “regularly speak or hear the foreign language of the examination at home” or “have lived for one month or more in a country where the language is spoken”
chart showing that far more students taking the Mandarin AP exam are already speakers of that langauge

Thus, it’s no surprise to see that 89.4 percent of those taking the Mandarin exam identified themselves as “Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander.” Of all those across the entire United States who took the Mandarin exam last year, only 363 people did not identify themselves as falling within that category. This certainly does not match the hype about Mandarin as the foreign language being studied.

While I congratulate those who scored well on the exam (Chinese characters can certainly be a pain to learn regardless of your background), the test — and perhaps the curriculum, too — evidently needs considerable revision, which isn’t too surprising considering this was its first appearance. I’m a bit saddened, though, to see that more students from a wider variety of backgrounds aren’t taking up the challenge of Mandarin.

There doesn’t appear to be much of a gender imbalance, however, in AP Mandarin classes.

Percentages of students in AP language exams, by sex
chart showing the percentages of students in various AP language exams, by sex

Within a week or two I’ll be posting some interesting figures about U.S. post-secondary enrollments in Mandarin and other languages.

source: The 4th Annual AP Report to the Nation, College Board, February 13, 2008

Zhou Youguang awarded

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Zhou Youguang, often called the father of Hanyu Pinyin, has received another award.

Dì-wǔ jiè Wú Yùzhāng Jiǎng 31 rì zài Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué bānfā, céng cānyù “Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng’àn” zhìdìng de “Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zhī fù” Zhōu Yǒuguāng huòdé Wú Yùzhāng rénwén shèhuì kēxué jiǎng tè děng jiǎng.

Zhè wèi 102 suì gāolíng de yǔyánxuéjiā yǐ qí sì juǎn běn “Zhōu Yǒuguāng yǔwén lùn jí” huòjiǎng. Tā zǎonián xuéxí jīngjì xué, yè yú cóngshì yǔyán wénzì yánjiū. 1955 nián chūrèn Zhōngguó wénzì gǎigé wěiyuánhuì dì-yī yánjiūshì zhǔrèn, yánjiū wénzì gǎigé hé Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, bìng yú liù nián hòu chūbǎn “Hànzì gǎigé gàilùn,” quánmiàn xì tǒng de lùnshù le Zhōngguó de wénzì gǎigé wèntí. Tā hái cānyù zhìdìng “Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng’àn,” cùchéng “Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng’àn” chéngwéi yòng Luómǎ zìmǔ pīnxiě Hànyǔ de guójì biāozhǔn, bèi yùwéi “Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zhī fù.” Rújīn, zài Měiguó Guóhuì Túshūguǎn lǐ, jì cáng yǒu jīngjìxuéjiā Zhōu Yǒuguāng de zhùzuò, yòu yǒu zuòwéi yǔyán wénzìxué jiā Zhōu Yǒuguāng de zhùzuò.

Zhōu Yǒuguāng zài huòjiǎng gǎnyán zhōng chēng: “Wǒ de sūnnǚ zài xiǎoxué shí duì wǒ shuō, yéye nín kuī le, nín gǎo jīngjì bàntú ér fèi, gǎo yǔwén bànlùchūjiā, liǎng ge bànyuán hé qǐlai shì yī ge líng. Wǒ jīnhòu yào zàicì cóng líng zuòqǐ, hǎohāo xuéxí, lǎodāngyìzhuàng, gǎnshàng shídài. “Yōumò de fāyán yíngdé quánchǎng chíjiǔ de zhǎngshēng.

Jùxī, Zhōu Yǒuguāng 83 suì shí “huàn bǐ” yòng diànnǎo gōngzuò, 98 suì kāishǐ chàngdǎo “jīchǔ Huáwén” yùndòng, 100 suì, 101 suì, 102 suì shí jūn yǒu zhùzuò chūbǎn.

Tóngshí huòdé tèděng jiǎng de háiyǒu Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué jiàoshòu, zhùmíng fǎxuéjiā Xǔ Chóngdé. Xǔ Chóngdé céng cānyù qǐcǎo 1954 nián xiànfǎ, 1982 nián xiànfǎ, “Xiāng Gǎng tèqū jīběnfǎ” hé “Àomén tèqū jīběnfǎ” sìbù fǎ lǜ, jiànzhèng le Zhōngguó xiànzhèng fāzhǎn jìnchéng. Tā de huòjiǎng zhùzuò wèi “Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó xiànfǎ shǐ.”

Cǐwài, běn cì Wú Yùzhāng rénwén shèhuì kēxué jiǎng hái bānfā yīděng jiǎng 12 xiàng, yōuxiù jiǎng 25 xiàng.

Wú Yùzhāng rénwén shèhuì kēxué jiǎng yóu Wú Yùzhāng jījīn shèlì, miànxiàng quánguó jiǎnglì guónèi yǒu zhòngdà yǐngxiǎng de yōuxiù zhé xué shèhuì kēxué lùnzhù. Jù Wú Yùzhāng jījīn wěiyuánhuì zhǔrèn wěiyuán, Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué yuán xiàozhǎng Yuán Bǎohuà jièshào, zhèige jiǎng xiàng měi wǔ nián píngxuǎn yīcì, xiàn píngjiǎng xuékē wèi Mǎkèsīzhǔyì lǐlùn, zhéxué, jiàoyùxué, lì shǐxué, Zhōngguó chuántǒng wénhuà yǔ yǔyán wénzìxué, xīnwénxué, jīngjìxué hé fǎxué děng bā ge xuékē, měi ge xuékē shè tèděng jiǎng, yīděng jiǎng jí yōuxiù jiǎng. Zì 1987 nián zhìjīn, zhèige jiǎng yǐ bānfā wǔ jiè, Guō Mòruò, Lǚ Shūxiāng, Hú Shéng, Wáng Lì děng xiān-hòu huòjiǎng, yǐ chéngwéi quánguóxìng zhéxué shèhuì kēxué yánjiū guīgé jiào gāo de jiǎnglì.

Wú Yùzhāng jījīn yóu Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué shèlì, yǐ jìniàn wúchǎn jiējí gémìngjiā, jiàoyùjiā, lìshǐxuéjiā, yǔ yán wénzìxué jiā, Rénmín Dàxué dì-yī rèn xiàozhǎng Wú Yùzhāng.

source: ‘Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zhī fù’ huò Wú Yùzhāng rénwén shèhuì kēxué jiǎng (“漢語拼音之父”獲吳玉章人文社會科學獎), Xinhua, November 1, 2007

further reading:

Pioneer Mandarin ‘immersion’ program sinking?

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Some eleven years after it began, what is touted as the first U.S. elementary school Mandarin immersion program is reportedly in trouble.

In September 1996, Montgomery County [Maryland] started what it promoted as the first Mandarin Chinese immersion program for elementary students in the country. The program at Potomac Elementary School became a national model, and acclaim and fame followed.

Today, the original class of first-graders are seniors preparing for college. Many continued to study Chinese in middle and high school, but most dropped out in recent years — a handful as late as this fall — citing confusion in the curriculum and difficulties with the instructor. Now, just three of the first 22 students continue to study Chinese at the cluster’s high school….

Critics say there is a lack of resources and appropriate materials, poor coordination among grade levels and inadequate teacher development. There’s even disagreement among educators on what immersion is.

“Immersion can mean many things to different people in the field,” said Elena Izquierdo, vice president of the District-based nonprofit National Association for Bilingual Education and a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. “For some, immersion is total immersion, for others it is partial, and some people call one class in foreign language an immersion class.”

It is also important to define the goal of each program; all are not the same, Izquierdo said. Some aim for complete reading, writing and oral proficiency in a foreign language; others might be geared to gaining conversational skills.

At first, the Chinese immersion students at Potomac were “a school within a school,” sticking together from kindergarten through fifth grade. Principal Linda Goldberg changed the format when she arrived in 2002, believing that students learning Chinese needed more interaction with the other students.

Today, 137 students at Potomac, from kindergarten to fifth grade, take math and science in Chinese and other subjects in English, she said.

Judith Klimpl, supervisor of foreign languages for Montgomery public schools, said math and science were chosen because the subjects are taught with many hands-on activities and have concrete vocabulary. There is no intensive grammar or writing instruction in Chinese at this level.

Once students move to Hoover Middle School, lessons in language acquisition intensify, Principal Billie-Jean Bensen said. The students, who used to have two periods in Chinese, now have one, including an “immersion class” in the sixth grade. But, Bensen conceded, the title of the class is probably “not correct.” A single class shouldn’t be labeled immersion, she said.

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Children at Potomac Elementary who enroll in the Chinese partial immersion program are taught mathematics and science in the Chinese language, but not the language itself. The result, parents say, is a familiarity with the language and enhanced listening skills when they reach middle school and a more formal language program begins….

The transition to middle school, and then from middle school to high school, lies at the heart of the program’s problems.

“There’s definitely issues with transitioning from Potomac Elementary to Hoover and from Hoover to Churchill,” said Sees. “If you look at the dropout rate in the high school itself, it’s abysmal.”

Immersion students take an immersion class in sixth grade and then are filtered into the standard one-period-per-day Chinese language classes with students who were not in an immersion program in seventh grade, said Hoover Principal Billie-Jean Bensen. They then continue in that traditional language course structure in high school. Schick said that the transition process at Hoover has improved in the last two years.

The first three levels of Chinese language instruction in the county’s schools are generally completed in middle school and the first year of high school, said Duffield….

sources and further reading:

Taiwanese, eh?

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I’m so far behind on posts that when Taffy of Tailingua sent this to me people in Taipei probably really were wearing short sleeves. They’re certainly not wearing so little now, with the cold, damp, miserable weather we’ve been having lately. Oh well, at least it’s better than what so many people have been having to endure in China. I hope Pinyin News readers there are keeping warm and didn’t get stuck in some transportation-related hell.
photo discussed in this post -- large blue text against a white background, Ma and Siew shown from the waist up with their arms crossed; a blue bird on the left
This poster on the back of a bus is for Taiwan’s presidential campaign.

It reads:

Táiwān ei lìliang
Shìjiè dǎ tōngguān

Mǎ Yīngjiǔ — Xiāo Wàncháng

.

台灣ㄟ力量
世界打通關

馬英九 蕭萬長

It’s hard to put this into English that makes sense. Perhaps “Taiwan shows its power to the world.” The idea is something like “Taiwan can overcome all obstacles.” It doesn’t strike me as a good slogan. But maybe I’m missing something.

The interesting part is that it has Taiwanese written with zhuyin (bopomofo): ㄟ (ei). But the ㄟ is basically just for show, since it doesn’t serve any linguistic purpose that the expected Chinese character — 的 (de), indicating the possessive — wouldn’t provide. The sign is still in Mandarin. (Dǎ tōngguān, for example, is not a Taiwanese expression, according to several native speakers I questioned about this.)

For those who don’t know, Mǎ Yīngjiǔ and Xiāo Wàncháng comprise the KMT’s ticket for next month’s presidential election.

Both Ma and Xiao use unusual spellings for the way they write their names in the Roman alphabet: Ma Ying-jeou and Vincent Siew, respectively.

The “Ying-jeou” of Ma’s name gives the appearance of Gwoyeu Romatzyh. But in that system his name would be “Maa Ing-jeou.”

“Siew” for Hanyu Pinyin’s Xiāo indicates that the source is likely a language other than Mandarin. But Taiwanese isn’t it, though Siew, unlike Ma, was born here. Because of that spelling, many foreigners in Taiwan pronounce his family name like the English word “shoe.” “Vincent” is of course an “English name” rather than a romanization of his birth name.

As I’m fond of pointing out, perhaps the only prominent Taiwan politician whose name is recognizably Hanyu Pinyin and only Hanyu Pinyin is President Chen Shui-bian, the man most responsible for seeing that Taiwan did not adopt Hanyu Pinyin during his tenure.

Pinyin in space

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Stories about the official approval last September of the name of “Chiayi” for an asteroid/planetoid/minor planet (not to be confused with Pluto, the “dwarf planet“) discovered by astronomers with Taiwan’s National Central University drew my attention to the fact that another minor planet already bears the name of the university — and that they named it using Tongyong Pinyin: “Jhongda” (i.e., Zhōng-Dà, the short form of the school’s name in Mandarin, Guólì Zhōngyāng Dàxué).

There are plenty of planetoids bearing names in Hanyu Pinyin, e.g. Chongqing, Guangzhou, Guizhou, Beijingdaxue [i.e., Beijing Daxue], Beishida [i.e., Bei-Shi-Da], and Zirankexuejijin [i.e., Ziran Kexue Jijin].

Omitting spaces is common in the names as a whole, though some of them have spaces. And some have hyphens.

Although the statistics of diacritical characters in minor planets’ names (a list after my own heart) shows that, as of June 1997, 667 (4.83%) of the 13,805 named minor planets had diacritical characters in their names, I didn’t spot any Hanyu Pinyin names with tone marks. The mark for first tone doesn’t appear on the list even once.

I wish they’d followed Tongyong when naming asteroid Chiayi, because that way they would have ended up with the same spelling that Hanyu Pinyin uses: Jiayi. But I guess the solar system’s big enough for Wade-Giles as well.

Here are some Google search figures from Taiwan government domains.

  • 532 from gov.tw domains for “chia-i”
  • 1,380 from gov.tw domains for “jiayi”
  • 2,660 from gov.tw domains for “chia-yi”
  • 997,000 from gov.tw domains for “chiayi”

Should Ma Ying-jeou win next month’s presidential election in Taiwan, both the executive and legislative branches of government would be in the hands of the no-longer-opposed-to-Hanyu-Pinyin Kuomintang, and the national folly of Tongyong Pinyin could soon cease to exist as an official system not just in Taiwan but everywhere throughout the known universe … except on planetoid no. 145534 (“Jhongda”), a big chunk of rock in orbit somewhere past Mars.

sources:

Language, writing, and tradition in Iran: SPP

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The most recent rerelease from Sino-Platonic Papers is Language, Writing, and Tradition in Iran (1.5 MB PDF), by David A. Utz.

In discussing language, writing, and tradition in Iran, we must begin with some clarification. What we, want to examine is the crystallization and development of a particular method and pattern of scribal practice, and its implications and consequences for the historical development and legacy of a particular cultural tradition. For this purpose we need to consider a particular geographical area, Iran, which for our purposes includes not only the modern Islamic Republic of Iran, but also Afghanistan, Armenia, and much of Central Asia. Furthermore, we are particularly concerned with a specific span of time, from the early Achaemenian period in the latter half of the 6th century B.C.E. until the progressive advent of Islam in these regions during the 7th-l0th centuries C.E. Throughout this period, the paramount characteristic of language and writing was that they were separate and distinct: language was not writing and writing was not language.

The semi-independent development of writing became a powerful historical factor influencing tradition in this region. Moreover, orthographic systems and methods tend to define, at least for modern scholarship, distinctions between so-called Old, Middle, and New Iranian languages. Examples of Old Iranian languages are Old Persian and Avestan. Examples of Middle Iranian languages are Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Khotanese, and Bactrian. Examples of New Iranian languages are Persian (including Farsi, Dari, and Tajiki), Pashtu, Baluchi, so-called “Kurdish” (in its disparate manifestations), as well as more obscure languages such as Ossetic, Yaghnobi, and the various Pamir languages. For our present purposes, we will be primarily concerned with Middle Iranian languages. Language, itself, did not become an historical force of consequence until the 20th century, due primarily to the introduction of 19th century European ideas about language and ethnicity and their exploitation for purely utilitarian political purposes by 20th century governments in this entire region.

To better understand the highly idiosyncratic development of writing in Iran in this crucial period, it may be helpful to see it in the larger context of one of the major operative factors in the formation of Iranian culture and tradition: the process of incessant dialectic and synthesis of the indigenous heritage of the Iranians, especially their distinctive religious and ethical ideology, and the accumulated traditions and methods of the Ancient Near East, especially the urban and mercantile society of Syria and Mesopotamia. Furthermore, it might be most effective to illustrate this process with a specific non-linguistic, non-scribal example: two specific major concepts within the Iranian view of history as presented in the Šāhnāma of Abu’l-Qāsim Firdausī. Although this work, which contains the history of the Iranians from creation until the Arab conquest, was completed only in the very early 11th century, the historical ideas and information it embodies originate from late Sasanian times (i.e., at the end of the particular span of time we want to consider) and from Sasanian historiographical works such as the Kārnāmak i Artaxšēr i Pāpakān and the famous Xuatāi-nāmak, translated into Arabic by Ibnu’l-Muqaffa` in the 8th century and used extensively by Islamic historiographers such as aṭ-Ṭabarī. It should be pointed out in passing that, even if these concepts originate in the late Sasanian environment and in some sense reflect the self-image of that time and place, it is puzzling that some of them, such as Cosmic Kingship, exemplified in the Šāhnāma especially by the four kings of the Pīšdādiyān dynasty [Kayūmars̱, Hūšang, Tahmūras̱, and Jamšīd], do not at all reflect the reality of that environment….

Sample of late Sasanian book script, commonly called “Book Pahlavi.”
basic character set of the late Sasanian book script

This is issue no. 24 of Sino-Platonic Papers. It was first published in August 1991.

Pinyin in/as art

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close-up of the map of China, by Paula Scher, with the densely packed names of the cities and towns (often written in a filled-in-outline style) making up the bulk of the painting
Detail of the painting China (2006), by Paula Scher.

The map has a few misspellings; but that’s not what’s important here.

Paula Scher has made some other works that might especially appeal to those interested in scripts, especially her terrific Publikum Calendar for 2007. It’s the sort of thing I think Languagehat would have hanging on his wall. (This is a Flash site, so I can’t provide a better link. Click on “2007” near the bottom right of the screen, and then click on the names of individual months.)

image of 'DE' in Chinese ink on rice paper. Click for larger image.The artist Xu Zonghui (Xú Zōnghuī / 徐宗揮 / 徐宗挥) takes a different approach, starting from the Chinese tradition of ink on rice paper. A few of his works in a recent show in Spain use the Roman alphabet, one with Hanyu Pinyin’s “de.”

Here are a few others with the Roman alphabet:
Chinese-style ink-on-rice-paper image of the word 'TAO'Chinese-style ink-on-rice-paper image of the word 'TE'Chinese-style ink-on-rice-paper image of the word 'ZEN'

What, no “Ching” (Jing)?

sources and further reading/viewing: