Pinyin news

Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased for free its fifth volume of reviews, mainly of books about China and its history and languages (11.6 MB PDF).

Even if you have no particular interest in the specific works reviewed, I recommend at least browsing through this and all of the other volumes of reviews from Sino-Platonic Papers, as they often feature Victor Mair at his most direct and entertaining about a wide range of subjects.

Table of Contents:

• Review Article: The Present State and Future Prospects of Pre-Han Text Studies. A review of Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Reviewed by E. Bruce Brooks, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

N.B.: The following 29 reviews are by the editor of Sino-Platonic Papers.

• Roger T. Ames, Chan Sin-wai, and Mau-sang Ng, eds. Interpreting Culture through Translation: A Festschrift for D. C. Lau.
• Sau Y. Chan. Improvisation in a Ritual Context: The Music of Cantonese Opera.
• CHANG Xizhen. Beijing Tuhua [Pekingese Colloquial].
• CHANG/AIXINJUELUO Yingsheng [AISINGIORO *Yingsheng]. Beijing Tuhua zhong de Manyu [Manchurian in Pekingese Colloquial].
• BAI Gong and JIN Shan. Jing Wei’er: Toushi Beijingren de Yuyan ["Capital Flavor": A Perspective on the Language of the Pekingese].
• JIA Caizhu, comp. Beijinghua Erhua Cidian [Dictionary of Retroflex Final-r in Pekingese].
• Julia Ching and R. W .L. Guisso, eds. Sages and Sons: Mythology and Archaeology in Ancient China.
• FENG Zhiwei. Xiandai Hanzi he Jisuanji (Modern Chinese Characters and Electronic Computers).
• FENG Zhiwei. Zhongwen Xinxi Chuli yu Hanyu Yanjiu [Chinese Information Processing and Research on Sinitic].
• Andre Gunder Frank. The Centrality of Central Asia.
• HUANG Jungui. Hanzi yu Hanzi Paijian Fangfa [Sinographs and Methods for Ordering and Looking up Sinographs].
• W. J. F. Jenner. The Tyranny of History: The Roots of China’s Crisis.
• Adam T. Kessler. Empires Beyond the Great Wall: The Heritage of Genghis Khan.
• David R. McCraw. Du Fu’s Laments from the South.
• Michael Nylan, tr. and comm. The Canon of Supreme Mystery, by Yang Hsiung.
• R. P. Peerenboom. Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao.
• Henry G. Schwarz. An Uyghur-English Dictionary.
• Vitaly Shevoroshkin, ed. Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages.
• Vitaly Shevoroshkin, ed. Nostratic, Dene-Caucasian, Austric and Amerind.
• Laurence G. Thompson, comp. Studies of Chinese Religion: A Comprehensive and Classified Bibliography of Publications in English, French, and German through 1970.
• Laurence G. Thompson, comp. Chinese Religion in Western Languages: A Comprehensive and Classified Bibliography of Publications in English, French, and German through 1980.
• Laurence G. Thompson, comp. Chinese Religion: Publications in Western Languages, 1981 through 1990.
• Aat Vervoorn. Men of the Cliffs and Caves: The Development of the Chinese Eremitic Tradition to the End of the Han Dynasty.
• WANG Jiting, ZHANG Shaoting, and WANG Suorong, comp. Changjian Wenyan Shumianyu [Frequently Encountered Literary Sinitic Expressions in Written Language].
• John Timothy Wixted. Japanese Scholars of China: A Bibliographical Handbook.
• YÜ Lung-yü, ed. Chung-Yin wen-hsüeh kuan-hsi yüan-liu [The Origin and Development of Sino-Indian Literary Relations].
• ZHANG Guangda and RONG Xinjiang. Yutian Shi Congkao [Collected Inquiries on the History of Khotan].
• ZHANG Yongyan, chief ed. Shishuo Xinxu Cidian [A Dictionary of A New Account of Tales of the World].
• Peter H. Rushton. The Jin Ping Mei and the Non-Linear Dimensions of the Traditional Chinese Novel.

• William H. Baxter, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Reviewed by Paul Rakita Goldin, Harvard University.
• JI Xianlin (aka Hiän-lin Dschi). Dunhuang Tulufan Tuhuoluoyu Yanjiu Daolun [A Guide to Tocharian Language Materials from Dunhuang and Turfan]. Reviewed by XU Wenkan, Hanyu Da Cidian editorial offices in Shanghai.
• GU Zhengmei. Guishuang Fojiao Zhengzhi Chuantong yu Dasheng Fojiao [The Political Tradition of Kushan Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism]. Reviewed by XU Wenkan, Hanyu Da Cidian editorial offices in Shanghai.

• W. South Coblin, University of Iowa. A Note on the Modern Readings of 土蕃.
• Rejoinder by the Editor.

• Announcement concerning the inauguration of a new series in Sino-Platonic Papers entitled “Bits and Pieces.”

This work also continues the discussion regarding the Chinese characters “土蕃” and Tibet.

This was first published in July 1994 as issue no. 46 of Sino-Platonic Papers.

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Nciku, a Web site that bills itself as “more than a dictionary,” has a nifty feature that allows users to find Chinese characters by drawing them with a mouse.

As you draw, possible character matches will appear in the box to the right of your drawing, with the results refined as your drawing progresses. You don’t need to know the canonical stroke order to get this to work, nor do your calligraphy skills need to be perfect, as this example shows.

Once you see the correct character offered as a choice, click on it and it will be entered into the search box for the site’s online dictionary. This dictionary feature can handle multiple-character input and will even prompt you with likely choices to fill out your search.

via Keywords

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Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has put online new a Web site devoted to stroke order for Chinese characters.

Unlike the older MOE stroke-order online handbook, this new site provides animations of the stroke order for 4,808 of the most frequently used traditional Chinese characters. And they really are traditional, too. For example, a Pinyin search for tai (it doesn’t accept tone marks or numbers) doesn’t return 台, even though it is more commonly seen in Taiwan than the full form of 臺. But perhaps that’s a glitch, since 台 is within the system, as a search for that particular character reveals.

Users can also test their knowledge of official stroke order, since each character’s animation also comes with an interactive feature in which users trace the strokes with their mouse. (Click on the button to the top right of the character.) It can be a little picky, as I suppose befits the prescriptive nature of the site. (In the real world, people write many characters using orders other than what Taiwan’s Ministry of Education and your Mandarin teacher might tell you is the One True Way. But that’s another matter.)

Although there’s no English interface at present, the files are labeled in English, so positioning your mouse over the navigation elements will usually reveal enough for non-Hanzi readers to make their way around.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t appear to work with anything other than @#$%! Internet Explorer. Also, at first the search feature allowed the entry of no more than four letters, making it impossible to use Pinyin (Hanyu Pinyin is offered along with Taiwan’s official Tongyong Pinyin) to look up characters for, say, zhong and guang, or for the Pinyin syllables with the most letters: chuang, shuang, and zhuang (not counting -r forms); but someone there is on the ball, since that was fixed after I wrote the ministry about it yesterday.

site and further reading:

• Learning Program for Stroke Order of Frequently Used Chinese Characters, Taiwan Ministry of Education
• stroke counts: Taiwan vs. China, Pinyin News

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Roddy of Chinese Forums, Signese, Dreams of White Tiles, and even more sites, found a new video (4 min. 40 sec.) of Zhou Youguang speaking, in English, to a reporter from the Guardian.

I was kind of surprised to see this featured on the Guardian’s front page under the ‘Father of Pinyin’ title - I’d wager 9/10ths upwards of the Guardian’s readership doesn’t know what pinyin is. Somewhat unforgivably they’ve managed to spell the guy’s name wrong and not bothered to add tones to the pinyin used in the video, and the interview is pretty weak - basically it’s ‘here’s a nice old Chinese guy talking for a few minutes’ but there’s really very little of depth. They’ve also opted to add subtitles to what sounds to me like perfectly comprehensible English.

But enough negativity, if you want to get a look at the guy who rescued you from bopomofo, have a look.

As happy as I am about the video, I’m going to add a bit more negativity. Failure to get the word parsing correct is also a major error: not “pin yin zhi fu” but “Pīnyīn zhī fù.” Actually, even that isn’t so good, because Pinyin is meant for modern baihua, not the style of Literary Sinitic and its many short forms. Thus, “Pīnyīn de fùqin” would be better.

The accompanying article is amazingly sloppy in parts.

Although the article manages to spell Zhou Youguang’s name correctly, it consistently refers to him not by his family name but by his given name, “Youguang.” It’s almost inconceivable that any reporter in China could (repeatedly) make such an elementary mistake; so perhaps this is the fault of an overzealous copy editor.

I’m not going to sort out and list what’s correct and what’s incorrect in the rest of the article, other than mention one point at the end.

Confusingly, Taiwan uses several different romanisation methods — including a variant of pinyin, tongyong pinyin — and zuiyin.

Zuiyin? Of course what is meant is zhuyin (zhùyīn/註音/注音), which is spelled correctly earlier in the article. Zuiyin (zuìyīn/罪因) is a noun meaning “cause of a crime.”

sources:

• Sound principles: On the 50th anniversary of the introduction of his alphabet, Tania Branigan meets 102-year-old Zhou Youguang, the man credited with helping millions of Chinese to read and write, Guardian, February 21, 2008
• Guardian Interview with “The Father of Pinyin”, Chinese Forums

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Several months ago I wrote about the move by Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to impose Tongyong Pinyin by instituting standards for the writing of place names. (See MOI and Tongyong Pinyin: update). I was told that my remarks had been translated into Mandarin and distributed to those involved. But I have never received any response, despite more than one follow-up call. Although I never much expected to receive a useful response anyway, I had hoped for at least something.

Keep in mind that these are remarks aimed at those in the central government, who, at least for the time being, are compelled to work within the framework of Tongyong Pinyin. Also, I tried to stick as much as possible to the examples in the government’s draft, thus my use of “Jhuzih Hu,” which is both Tongyong Pinyin and a name whose word parsing is more complicated than most.

I have amended a few details, deleted some sections with personal details, and removed the conclusion, which was mainly polite blah-blah-blah.

I would welcome comments and suggestions for revisions.

Response to Taiwan’s Proposed Guidelines for Place Names in Romanization and English

As you are surely aware, Taiwan’s government has a very poor record when it comes to romanization. So the government now has an important opportunity to show Taiwan’s foreign community and others here who care about standards and are pained by the nation’s sloppiness in this regard that it is finally giving the issue the care it deserves. Unfortunately, the proposed guidelines in their present state would do little to improve the situation and in some cases could make things worse. Specifically, the proposed guidelines have seven basic problems.

1. Failure to use Hanyu Pinyin
2. Failure to use apostrophes correctly
3. Failure to use hyphens correctly
4. Partial failure to indicate individual words correctly
5. Failure to handle non-Chinese names correctly
6. Failure to consider instances where tone marks might be useful or even necessary
7. Failure to fix old, misleading spellings

Before I give details about the problems listed above I would like to note that the guidelines are, however, correct in one important way: Place names should begin with a capital letter followed by lower-case letters. The Taipei City Government made an enormous mistake when it instituted the practice of adding extra capital letters where none are needed.

WRONG	RIGHT
NanJing East Road	Nanjing East Road
TianMu	Tianmu
TaiNan	Tainan

The Taipei City Government’s foolish policy of ExTra CaPiTal LettErs also helped bring about another major problem in Taipei: the omission of apostrophes before syllables beginning with a, e, and o. This will be addressed in my second point. But first comes the introductory one.

1. Failure to use Hanyu Pinyin

I know that the issue of Hanyu Pinyin vs. Tongyong Pinyin is not supposed to be on the table, so I do not expect any action to be taken on this for now. Nevertheless, I believe it necessary to remind the Ministry and those responsible for reviewing the guidelines that members of the international community — both within and outside of Taiwan — overwhelmingly support the adoption of Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin and oppose the use of Tongyong Pinyin. There is simply no green/blue divide among foreigners on this issue; an overwhelming majority of “green” foreigners oppose Tongyong Pinyin and strongly support Hanyu Pinyin; and an overwhelming majority of “blue” foreigners feel the same way. For foreigners, this is a practical matter, not a political one.

The government’s insistence upon the use of Tongyong Pinyin has cost Taiwan respect and is having an impact on students’ choices of where to study Mandarin. Moreover, the lack of a consistent, correct, and internationalized romanization system considerably complicates Taiwan’s efforts to lure more tourists to the island. The government should abandon Tongyong Pinyin immediately, before it does any more harm. Too much time, money, and effort have been wasted already.

Nevertheless, some of the damage that has been done could be repaired if the government implements the best possible guidelines for the use of the romanization system it continues to insist upon. The proposed guidelines, however, are at best insufficient and thus are in need of significant revision.

This brings me to my main points.

2. Failure to use apostrophes correctly

The MOI guidelines correctly indicate that something is needed to distinguish syllables beginning with a, e, and o. But the MOI guidelines use the wrong method to indicate these breaks.

The MOI says that people should use a hyphen before syllables beginning with a, e, and o. This is a very bad idea. The correct way to do this is by using an apostrophe. Here is the rule Taiwan should adopt: “Put an apostrophe before any syllable that begins with a, e, or o, unless that syllable comes at the beginning of a word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.”

Table: Examples of how to write words that have inner syllables beginning with a, e, or o

WRONG	RIGHT
Da-an	Da’an
Su-ao	Su’ao
Ren-ai	Ren’ai

The main reason it is crucial not to use a hyphen in such places is that hyphens have other important uses, which I will discuss next.

3. Failure to use hyphens correctly

Hyphens are especially important when it comes to assigning names to places and things (especially things representing abbreviations and things that join two places).

WRONG	RIGHT	REASON
Suhua Expressway	Su-Hua Expressway	This road runs between Su‘ao and Hualian
Beiyi Expressway	Bei-Yi Expressway	This road runs between Taipei (Taibei) and Yilan. (And for heaven’s sake don’t make this “Pei-Yi.”)
Jianan dazun	Jia-Nan dazun	Jia-Nan refers to Jiayi and Tainan (嘉南大圳).
Huajiang Bridge	Hua-Jiang Bridge	The bridge joins Wanhua and Jiangzicui.
Sun Moon Lake	Sun-Moon Lake	These are joined elements.
Taida	Tai-Da	An abbreviation for Taiwan Daxue (台灣大學)

See http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/hyphens.html for details and additional ways that hyphens can help clarify Pinyin.

4. Partial failure to indicate individual words correctly

The guidelines are correct that there should be spaces between words (词) but not between mere syllables (字). But the guidelines are too vague — and sometimes incorrect! — about how to determine what a word is (and thus what should be written separately).

Taiwan should use the guidelines that have already been worked out for these principles and have been accepted internationally. I am referring, of course, to the guidelines for Hanyu Pinyin, which are covered in general here — http://www.pinyin.info/rules/pinyinrules.html — and in detail in two books: Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography (漢語拼音和正詞法) (ISBN 7-80052-148-6) and 新華拼寫詞典 (ISBN 7-100-03414-0). The latter book is sometimes available at the main Eslite bookstore near Taipei City Hall. The best Mandarin-English dictionary following these principles is the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, edited by John DeFrancis; you should also use it as a standard reference.

Supporters of Tongyong Pinyin have often touted that system’s supposed “compatibility” with Hanyu Pinyin. Having the two systems share the same basic guidelines would be a good way to demonstrate that this is something more than empty words.

Most of the examples in the guidelines are correct. A few need revision.

WRONG	RIGHT
Yangmingshan	Yangming Shan
Jhuzihhu	Jhuzih Hu [Zhuzi Hu]

5. Failure to handle non-Chinese names correctly

Just a few days ago President Chen Shui-bian (whose name, I note, is spelled in Hanyu Pinyin, not Tongyong Pinyin; but no one confuses him with the president of the People’s Republic of China!) was in Tainan County to mark the opening of some new roads around the Southern Taiwan Science Park. Each of the three roads has been given a name from an aboriginal language, something the president praised. Yet the government’s guidelines would force Mandarin upon the aboriginal names, changing them to something that would be incorrect.

Similarly, the administration has supported Aborigines regaining their original names and even villages reacquiring their original, non-Chinese names. (See, for example, http://news.yam.com/cna/garden/200708/20070801554267.html )

Ideally, no Chinese characters would be used with some of these names; but I don’t expect that to happen soon.

WRONG	RIGHT
Kedaigelan	Ketagalan
Tailuge	Taroko
Sihmakusih (司馬庫斯)	Smangus

Attention must also eventually be given to the issue of using Sinitic languages other than Mandarin (specifically Taiwanese and Hakka) in place names.

6. Failure to consider instances where tone marks might be useful or even necessary

Because Mandarin is a tonal language, a few names that are different may appear to be identical in romanization unless tone marks are included. In practice, only a very small percentage of names are subject to this ambiguity. Taipei, for example, has more than 600 different street names; but only the following would need attention there.

Chinese characters	Pinyin and English mix
景華街	Jǐnghuá St.
景化街	Jǐnghuà St.
同安街	Tóng’ān St.
通安街	Tōng’ān St.
萬慶街	Wànqìng St.
萬青街	Wànqīng St.
五常街	Wǔcháng St.
武昌街	Wǔchāng St.
向陽路	Xiàngyáng Rd.
襄陽路	Xiāngyáng Rd.

For the benefit of foreigners and to aid clarity, tone marks should follow the practice of Hanyu Pinyin, not of Zhuyin Fuhao, i.e. first tone should be indicated (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, and ǖ; not a, e, i, o, u, and ü). This is especially important because most names are written without tone marks; we should not get these confused with words that have only first-tone syllables, such as Tōng’ān (通安).

One possibility would be to tone marks on only the less common name(s). For example, we would write 五常街 as “Wǔcháng Street” but 武昌街 simply as “Wuchang Street” (rather than as “Wǔchāng Street“).

Some would advocate using tone marks on most if not all signage with Pinyin. This deserves study.

7. Failure to fix old, misleading spellings

Several years ago when the central government promulgated Tongyong Pinyin it kept the old spellings for some cities and all counties (other than Yilan, which changed from “Ilan”). This was a mistake. The old spellings are inherently ambiguous in pronunciation and are often quite simply misleading.

The government should end the policy of retaining most old spellings. Quite simply, there is nothing useful to foreigners or anyone else about retaining, for example, “Taitung” for what should be spelled “Taidong.” A limited, practical approach for the time being would be to immediately change all names that are spelled the same way in Tongyong Pinyin and Hanyu Pinyin, with the possible exception of retaining “Taipei” instead of switching to “Taibei.”

WRONG	RIGHT
Taitung	Taidong
Matsu	Mazu
Kinmen	Jinmen
Hualien	Hualian
Chiayi	Jiayi
Pingtung	Pingdong
Keelung	Jilong

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This season is the thirty-first anniversary of the reinstatement of China’s national college entrance examinations after the end of the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Here’s the story of something that happened the year of the reinstatement (1977), when Zhang Huiming, a professor in the Chinese department of Xianyang Normal College, grading exams from Xianyang, Shaanxi, and its surrounding areas.

That year, after the start of the third day of work grading the exams had begun, one of the teachers on the grading team suddenly shouted in amazement, “Come look at this exam!” There before all of us was a language exam that had been answered completely in Hanyu Pinyin. Facing this situation, everyone discussed it. Right away, some said, “This is simply horsing around, putting on a show. Give it a zero!” The head of the grading team was inclined toward this idea. But Zhang Huiming insisted on first putting the exam into Chinese characters. “Who wouldn’t allow such an exam? There’s no rule against it. And Chairman Mao long ago indicted, ‘Writing should follow the world’s common Pinyin trend [i.e., use an alphabet like everyone else].’”

Everyone fell silent. Zhang Huiming took about half an hour to annotate the Hanyu Pinyin with Chinese characters. It turned out that the exam was nearly without errors in spelling or tone marks. The score, to everyone’s surprise, was 88. The teachers who corrected the exams were all convinced by this examinee of the soundness of training in Hanyu Pinyin.

A nice story. But I can’t help but note sadly that a bunch of well-educated people didn’t simply read the essay as it was written. Such are the prejudices against it. What I’d really like is a story that doesn’t treat Pinyin as if it were merely a set of training wheels.

“Gāokǎo huīfù 30 nián” zhǔtí bàodào tuīchū hòu, hěn duō dúzhě fā lái diànzǐ yóujiàn, jiǎngshù dāngnián de gāokǎo gùshi. Xiányáng Shīfàn Xuéyuàn Zhōngwénxì jiàoshòu Zhāng Huìmín, shì 1977 nián Xiányáng dìqū yǔwén yuèjuàn lǎoshī zhīyī. Dāngnián, yī fèn wánquán yòng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn wánchéng de yǔwén dájuàn ràng tā zhìjīn nánwàng.

Dāngnián, yuèjuàn gōngzuò kāishǐ hòu de dì-sān tiān, yuèjuànzǔ yī lǎoshī tūrán jīngyà de shuō: “Kuài kàn, zhè fèn shìjuàn!” Yī piān wánquán yòng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zuòdá de yǔwén shìjuàn chéngxiàn zài dàjiā miànqián. Suíhòu, zhè fèn tèshū de shìjuàn zài quántǐ lǎoshī zhōngjiān kāishǐ chuányuè. Miànduì zhè yī qíngkuàng, dàjiā yìlùnfēnfēn. Yǒurén dāngchǎng biǎoshì: “Jiǎnzhí jiùshì húnào, biāoxīnlìyì, gěi língfēn!” Yuèjuànzǔ zǔzhǎng yě qīngxiàng gāi yìjian. Dàn Zhāng Huìmín jiānchí yīng xiān jiāng kǎojuàn fānyì chéng Hànzì. “Shuí bù ràng tā zhèyàng dájuàn? Gāokǎo bìng méiyǒu bùyǔn xǔyòng Hànyǔ Pīnyīn zuò dá’àn de guīdìng, kuàngqiě Máo zhǔxí zǎojiù zhǐshì: ‘Wénzì yào zǒu shìjiè gòngtóng Pīnyīn de fāngxiàng.’”

Chénmò le yīhuìr zhīhòu, Zhāng Huìmín yòng jìn bàn ge xiǎoshí de shíjiān, gěi zhěng fèn dájuàn shàng de Hànyǔ Pīnyīn biāozhù le Hànzì. Ràng Zhāng Huìmín nányǐ wàngjì de shì, nà fèn kǎojuàn, yīnjié, shēngdiào jīhū méiyǒu cuòwù. Jiéguǒ, zhè fèn fèijìn zhōuzhé de yǔwén dájuàn jīng gě fùzé lǎoshī píngyuè hòu, zǒng fēn jìngrán shì 88 fēn. Quántǐ yuèjuàn lǎoshī dōu bèi zhè wèi kǎoshēng zhāshi de Hàn yǔyán gōngdǐ suǒ zhéfú.

source: Yī fèn yòng pīnyīn wánchéng de yǔwén shìjuàn (一份用拼音完成的语文试卷), Huash.com, March 27, 2007

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Adsotrans — which offers the best free, online Pinyin transcription tool — has just released a plugin for WordPress, the most popular software for blogging. This will annotate Chinese characters with all-important word parsing. Trevelyan’s post provides a download link and directions.

Check it out.

ChinesePod is helping sponsor this project, so they deserve thanks.

source: Our Adsotrans WordPress Plugin, Adsotrans blog, February 14, 2008

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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

Comparison of Lowest Scores Across Language Exams

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”

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

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

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