The skits from the second day of the Taiwanese-language school play competition (see previous blog entry) were not as retro as the previous day’s had been. The skits from the junior high students were instead much more “modern,” which I take as a very good sign. On the other hand, the scripts for the plays on the second day were also predominantly — sometimes exclusively (though that doesn’t work well) — in Chinese characters.
Monthly Archives: October 2004
Taiwanese skit competition
My mother in law will be a judge tomorrow in the Taipei County junior high school Taiwanese play contest, so my wife and I went over to the site of the competition today to pick up some material for her that hadn’t arrived through the mail yet. The stage was occupied today by groups from the county’s elementary schools, so we stayed to watch some of the 10-minute skits. A few things stood out, beyond the usual charming amateurism of youngsters in school plays.
All of the skits featured adults as well as children — actual adults, not just kids playing a role. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, because I can’t imagine that grownups would be included in children’s plays in America.
All of the skits also featured rural themes and/or the elderly. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I would have been much happier to see some skits in Taiwanese about astronauts, CEOs, scientists, glamorous movie stars, or even rap music stars. If Taiwanese speakers see their language as just of the past, or just of the countryside, it’s going to die.
I had a look at the script for one of the plays. It was almost entirely in Chinese characters, with a few words written in romanization and a sprinkling of zhuyin fuhao. Most unfortunate.
English in Guangzhou
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English names may be introduced in every public place in the growing southern city of Guangzhou.
The Guangzhou Language Committee said the city government has asked relevant departments and organizations to introduce English names for city streets, scenic spots, parks, residential areas, bus stops, metro stations, piers, museums and even public toilets.
The municipal government is striving to turn the city into an international metropolis.
Currently, most of the city’s public places have only pinyin or local Cantonese style names that confuse most foreigners.
At the same time, the language committee will soon launch a city-wide campaign to check English usage in the city.
The committee plans to set up a task force to help inspect all public places to further promote and standardize the use of English names.
The public venues that have no English names will be asked to provide one while those with inappropriate names or bad translations will be required to come up with a better alternative, an official from the committee said.
Cantonese style expressions widely used in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions will no longer be considered English names.
New police cars are already being converted, with the pinyin of the Chinese word for police, “Jing Cha,” substituted by the word “police” on both sides of the car.
The first group of new patrol wagons were put into service in Guangzhou late last week.
By September 2006, all the patrol wagons in service will be replaced by the new 2004 versions, or re-painted in the new style that includes white, blue and yellow colours, said the official yesterday.
Meanwhile all the grass-roots police offices and sub-stations will also be required to put up signs that include their English names in front of the their gates before the end of the year to provide better service, the official added.
An English police hotline has also opened to serve the English-speaking people in Guangzhou.
From the China Daily.
forgetting characters
Here’s another article on people who use computers forgetting how to write Chinese characters by hand. Of course, this is nothing new. But I think it’s important that it gets coverage, however poorly written the articles might be. The article is a muddle, confusing language and script and labeling the problem “computer dyslexia”. (“Neurological evidence reveals the cause of “computer dyslexia” – typing does not bring impression of the marks that writing creates, and therefore does not stimulate the brain’s central nervous system that controls language,” it says.)
It’s also based on unscientific polls. But the basic point remains: People are increasingly unable to write their own language in what has been its standard form (Chinese characters) without help from technology.
Staring blankly at a sheet of white paper, pen poised in the air, you scratch your head for a single word that you know how to read, how to say and how to write.
Once seated at a computer, you find your confusion disappears.
If you have these symptoms, you may be affected by “computer dyslexia.”
And it is a safe bet you have plenty of companions in China, reported China Daily.
An online survey, jointly conducted by the Beijing-based China Youth Daily and Chinese news portal Sina.com, shows that 67 per cent of participants admit they occasionally forget how to write certain Chinese characters.
By fixing people’s fingers to a small alphabet-based keyboard, the computer age based on “0” and “1” seems to be posing a threat to the revered Chinese language.
Xu Chengcheng, a 23-year-old accountant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, admits he “feels more in my element when typing words than writing.”
Xu took command of a computer seven years ago and has been a frequent user for four years .
He has his own laptop and “seldom writes with a pen” even after work.
“I don’t have the faintest idea of the shape of a single character when I turn to pen and paper,” said Xu.
Currently, most methods to input Chinese characters are based on pinyin, their phonetic alphabets, and offer a list of words for people to choose.
“We can choose the right word simply out of a vague idea or impression of how the word looks,” said Sun Tian, a 25-year-old who has worked for a website for more than three years.
But when people have to write a character down, they have to write every strike and stroke of the word.
Neurological evidence reveals the cause of “computer dyslexia” – typing does not bring impression of the marks that writing creates, and therefore does not stimulate the brain’s central nervous system that controls language.
According to the survey, with the rapid popularization of computers, only 47 per cent of the interviewees use pens to write each day.
And about 30 per cent said they “generally type at the computer and rarely write with a pen.”
“I write with a pen occasionally and I firmly restrict my working time to within eight hours, so I barely suffer from ‘dyslexia,'” said Sun.
In sharp contrast, large numbers of young people are undergoing more than “dyslexia.”
“Moreover, I feel more and more scared of writing, because I am no longer confident in my handwriting,” Xu added. Because of a lack of practice, his handwriting is getting poorer and, according to him, “unrecognizable.”
“It’s a pity that the time-honoured and gorgeous Chinese calligraphy is being forgotten!” exclaimed Sun.
In response, the survey shows 80 per cent of the 432 participants checked the response that “we urgently need to strengthen the protection of the Chinese language.”
This fact is being spotlighted with the Chinese language now under siege from computers, short message services and various foreign languages.
The frequent application of computers and mobile phones deprives Chinese people of the ability to write by pen.
At the same time, the popularity of foreign languages detaches them from their mother tongue.
“I always mix some English words in my speech, such as ‘considerate’ or ‘cool,'” said Sun, who studied English at college.
“The advance of foreign languages in China is indeed the best proof that our country is walking toward the world, but we should not therefore ignore our mother tongue,” China Youth Daily quoted a university graduate Xiao Xiao as saying.
“After all, the Chinese language bears thousands of years of our traditional culture.”
‘recognizing’ Taiwan’s languages
Law recognizing all languages urged
The government must take steps to legally preserve the diversity of Taiwan’s multicultural society while simultaneously working toward ethnic reconciliation, said academics and experts at the Ethnic and Cultural Development Conference yesterday.
Future policies should legalize the use and establish the importance of local languages, seek to accurately reflect a multicultural Taiwanese identity and avoid the assimilation-focused policies of the past, they said.
Over 200 participants gathered to talk with academics and political figures in the National Central Library on the first day of the three-day conference sponsored by the Council for Cultural Affairs, Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP), Council for Hakka Affairs, the Ministry of Education and the Veterans Affairs Commission.
In his opening remarks to the conference, President Chen Shui-bian (???) urged people to forget the mistakes of the past and focus on the future….
A focus of the conference yesterday was a draft law making all the languages used by ethnic groups in Taiwan national languages.
The proposed national languages development law would guarantee equal respect for all Taiwan-ese tongues, such as Hakka, Hoklo and all Aboriginal languages, Chen said.
The law, emphasized Chen, would not demand that everyone learn all national languages and would establish Mandarin as the official language to be used in government and administrative proceedings, said Chen.
Legal recognition of each dia-lect’s status is important, Chen said, because without such recognition “there would still be a long way to go towards ethnic reconciliation….”
“Although 77 percent of the ethnic Hoklo speak Hoklo at home, about 20 percent speak Mandarin in the home. For the Hakka, the percentage of people speaking Mandarin at home [41] exceeds that of those speaking Hakka [31], and we don’t even need to talk about the huge number of Aboriginals that do not speak their native tongue in the home,” said Peter Tuin (???), a professor at National Taitung University….
bilingual education in Shanghai
China’s first 10-year bilingual teaching plan has been unveiled recently by the Shanghai Education Administration, China Radio International reported Thursday.
In 2010, all required courses such as Mathematics, Geography will be expected to be taught in both English and Chinese in Primary and Middle schools in Shanghai.
The Plan will be carried out in two phases. By next year between 200 to 300 Primary and High schools woudl have developed bilingual teaching plans in diverse disciplines. In the second phase, by 2010, more than 400 schools will be capable of offering bilingual teaching.
conference on romanization of Taiwanese
I had planned to present a paper at this conference, but my new job has kept me so busy that I was unable even to attend, much to my regret.
Here’s an article on the conference and here’s the home page for the romanization conference, which includes the texts of many papers presented over the weekend.
English as the language of the home in S’pore
The crucial social statistic to note is that a lot more Chinese households are using English for everyday communication. Education Ministry data show that in 1988, the families of 20 per cent of Chinese Primary 1 pupils spoke mainly English at home. The percentage has risen to 50 per cent. For such a short period, the increase has been startling. The presumption that the percentage will keep rising will be hard to disprove in a country which has English as the working language.