Category Archives: China

more claims on eliminating illiteracy in China

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Carnival rube: Hey honey, let’s see how good this guy is. What would I win?

Navin (Steve Martin’s character): Uh, anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimble. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area. That includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.

—from The Jerk

It’s easy for people to be declared winners when the barriers for winning are set low enough and everyone is going to be declared a winner no matter what. Here’s what Xinhua reported on Saturday: “The Chinese government plans to eliminate all illiteracy among people aged between 15 and 24 by 2010.” As long as Chinese characters are the sole accepted script for the vast majority of people in China, the chances for this plan to really succeed are zero. But I’m certain it will be declared a great success anyway.

Remarkably, Xinhua included something in the article that rings true and hints at the prospects for any real success:

“The central government only appropriates eight million yuan (about one million US dollars) each year to tackle illiteracy, which means each illiterate person only has seven cents (less than one US cent) a year,” according to another MOE official who declined to be named. “And the increasing number of migrant workers has made education a tough task for the government,” he said.

Less than one US cent won’t buy even so much as one Chiclet, much less a whole pack. And it damn sure won’t be enough to boost literacy in any significant way.

That’s also basing things on the number of illiterate people in China as 114 million, which is far, far too low. But even if we accept both that claim and the BS claim by an official of the Ministry of Education who would identify himself that “China has maintained an illiteracy ratio of around 4 percent among the youth and the middle aged,” that doesn’t leave much money.

In 2010, China’s 15-24 age group will total some 190 million people. If 4 percent of those are counted as illiterate, then 7.6 million people would receive a total of 8 million yuan per year. So, even if China decided to axe all literacy programs for people over the age of 24 (which it won’t do) and commits all its alloted resources to the 15-24 age group, the funding would barely top US$1 per person per year to learn the modern world’s most difficult script. Then consider the fact that illiteracy is highest in China’s countryside — a vast area with inadequate infrastructure.

sources:

Tibet to eliminate illiteracy by 2010, says Xinhua

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Of course, I don’t believe a word of this. But I’m putting it up here for reference.

Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region intends to reduce its illiteracy rate to less than five percent in 2007 and to less than three percent in 2010, a senior regional education official announced on Friday.

The ongoing campaign to eliminate illiteracy in the region mainly targets people aged 15 to 50, the official said. Last year 15 percent of that group were illiterate, down from 39 percent in 2000, he added.

According to the regional education authorities, literacy in the region means knowing 30 Tibetan letters by heart and being able to read a phonetic transcript of the Tibetan or being able to read and write 1,500 Chinese characters.

And another article on a related topic:

Wǒguó shǎoshù mínzú wénmáng bànwénmáng lǜ 10 nián xiàjiàng 16 ge bǎifēndiǎn

Guójiā Mín-wěi Jiàoyùsī jīchǔ jiàoyù chù chùzhǎng zhōu lì rìqián biǎoshì, jìn shí niánlái, mínzú dìqū de sǎománg gōngzuò chéngjì xiǎnzhù. Zhōu lì shì zài Xīníng zhàokāi de 2006 niándù Zhōngxībù sǎománg gōngzuò huìbào huì shàng zuò shàngshù biǎoshì de. Gēnjù 1990 nián de rénkǒu pǔchá tǒngjì zīliào, shǎoshù mínzú 15 suì jí 15 suì yǐshàng wénmáng bànwénmáng rénkǒu bǐlì shì 30.83%, dàoliǎo 2000 nián, zhèige bǐlì yǐjing xiàjiàng dào 14.54%, qízhōng Xīzàng, Qīnghǎi, Yúnnán, Guìzhōu, Gānsù, Níngxià děng liù shěngqū wénmáng lǜ xiàjiàng de fúdù gāoyú quánguó píngjūn fúdù de 14.55%. Zhōu lì shuō, shǎoshù mínzú 15 suì jí 15 suì yǐshàng wénmáng bànwénmáng rénkǒu bǐlì zài shí niánjiān xiàjiàng 16 ge bǎifēndiǎn, yǔguó jiā de zhīchí yǔ mínzú dìqū zìshēn de nǔlì fēnbukāi.

They forgot to add that all the children of the world will join hands and sing songs of joy and peace….

sources:

Hainan primary school kicks out new student for poor Mandarin

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A man surnamed Huang enrolled his boy in school in Sanya, Hainan Province, China. But the boy’s teacher, after receiving no response to his question in Mandarin as to which student was named A Hao, decided school was no place for a child who didn’t speak Mandarin. The youngster could return after mastering Mandarin, the teacher said. (“Xuéhuì Pǔtōnghuà zàilái shàngxué ba.”)

Although the school has defended the indefinite suspension of the small child, citing “safety concerns,” it doesn’t seem to have many supporters of this action. Mr. Huang is considering a lawsuit against the school, and the district’s authorities have launched an investigation.

Mandarin is not even the native language for that part of China. The linguistic situation on Hainan is similar to that in Taiwan: most of the native population grew up speaking Hoklo or a non-Sinitic “minority” language, which are all suppressed in favor of Mandarin, whose speakers have poured in relatively recently. Although the active suppression of non-Mandarin languages in Taiwan is no longer as active as before or as the situation remains in China, indirect suppression remains very much in force.

Huáng xiānsheng xiàng jìzhě fǎnyìng, yóuyú gōngzuò xūyào, tā jiāng qī’ér cóng Hǎinán Shěng Wànnìng Shì bāndào Sānyà Shì Ānyóu Dìqū. Tā dǎsuan jiāng háizi sòngdào fùjìn de Ānyóu Xiǎoxué dúshū, dànshì háizi yīn bù huì Pǔtōnghuà ér bèi lèlìngtuìxué.

Qǐyīn: háizi zǒucuò jiàoshì

Huáng xiānsheng duì jìzhě shuō, háizi dì-yī tiān kāixué huílai hòu jiù duì tā shuō: “Bàba, wǒ zǒucuò jiàoshì le, lǎoshī jiào nǐ míngtiān qù yīxià xuéxiào.”

Dì-èr tiān, Huáng xiānsheng láidào xuéxiào hòu cái dézhī wèntí de yánzhòngxìng. Xiàozhǎng gàosu tā, tā de háizi yīn zǒu cuòle jiàoshì, ràng quán xuéxiào lǎoshī wèicǐ xūjīng yī chǎng. Bānzhǔrèn liǎng cì dào xuésheng qián bān xúnwèn něige xuésheng jiào Ā Hào, dànshì Ā Hào zuòzài jiàoshì lǐ què méiyǒu huídá. Bānzhǔrèn duì Huáng xiānsheng shuō, “Wǒ yī dào xuéxiào, Lóng lǎoshī jiù gēn wǒ shuō, ràng nǐ de háizi huíjiā ba, xuéhuì Pǔtōnghuà zàilái shàngxué ba.”

Huáng xiānsheng shuō, tā de háizi yuánlái zài lǎojiā dúguò yī niánjí, chéngjì bùcuò, dàn zài jiāxiāng jiǎng de duō shì Hǎinán huà, yīncǐ, tā de háizi shuō Pǔtōnghuà de nénglì hěn chà, zhǐnéng jiǎndān de tīngdǒng yīdiǎn.

Jiāzhǎng: yào dǎ guānsi tǎo gōngdào

Huáng xiānsheng duì jìzhě shuō, tā de xiǎohái yòu méiyǒu fàn cuòwu, méiyǒu shénme guòcuò, jiù yīnwèi bù huì Pǔtōnghuà, zǒu cuòle jiàoshì, jiù zhèyàng bèi chéngfá, zhè tài bù gōngpíng le. Jìrán xuéxiào yǐ tōngguò kǎoshì tóngyì qí bàomíng, jiù xiāngdāngyú shuāngfāng qiān le héyuē, xuéxiào bùnéng dānfāngmiàn huǐyuē.

Huáng xiānsheng chēng, wèile háizi de dúshū quánlì, tā jiāng dào jiàoyù zhǔguǎn bùmén tóusù, bìng dǎsuan jiāng xuéxiào gào shàng fǎtíng, wèi háizi tǎo huí gōngdào.

Xuéxiào: shìwéi ānquán kǎolǜ

Jìzhě jiù Huáng xiānsheng fǎnyìng de qíngkuàng láidào Ānyóu Xiǎoxué héshí qíngkuàng. Gāi xuéxiào Shàn xiàozhǎng jiēshòu jìzhě cǎifǎng shí chēng, gāi xuésheng bù shì běnxiào fànwéi nèi de xuésheng, yòu tīngbudǒng Pǔtōnghuà, bù huì yǔ rén jiāoliú. Shàn xiàozhǎng shuō, ràng gāi xuésheng tuìxué de zhíjiē yuányīn shì, gāi xuésheng zǒu cuòle jiàoshì, quán xuéxiào shī-shēng dàochù zhǎo, tā què zuòzài xué; qián bān de jiàoshì lǐ yī shēng bù kēng, xià de quán xuéxiào lǎoshī xūjīng yī chǎng. Shàn xiàozhǎng biǎoshì, rúguǒ bù fāshēng zhèyàng de shì, xuéxiào jiù bù huì lèlìng qí tuìxué le, zhè zhǔyào shì cóng ānquán fāngmiàn lái kǎolǜ de.

Jiàoyùjú: xuéxiào zuòfǎ bùduì

Jiù Huáng xiānsheng fǎnyìng qí háizi yīn bù huì Pǔtōnghuà ér bèi lèlìngtuìxué yīshì, jìzhě cǎifǎng le Sānyà Shì Jiàoyùjú fù júzhǎng zhāng wèi lán. Zhāng fù júzhǎng shuō, xuéxiào de zuòfǎ kěndìng bùduì, bùnéng yīnwèi xuésheng bù huì shuō Pǔtōnghuà jiù lèlìngtuìxué. Háizi bù huì Pǔtōnghuà, dào xuéxiào zhèyàng de huánjìng zhōng jiù kěyǐ xuéhǎo Pǔtōnghuà, zhè yěshì yī zhǒng xuéxí de guòchéng.

Zhāng fù júzhǎng shuō, huì pài yǒuguān rényuán yǔ xuéxiào xiétiáo, zélìng Ānyóu Xiǎoxué gǎizhèng cuòwù, jìxù ràng Huáng xiānsheng de háizi lái shàngxué.

Lǜshī: háizi yǒu dúshū quánlì

Jiù gāi xuésheng bèi xuéxiào lèlìngtuìxué yīshì, jìzhě cǎifǎng le Sānyà Shì yán bì xìn lǜshī shìwùsuǒ lǜshī chén chuān Huà xiānsheng. Chén lǜshī shuō, gēnjù wǒguó wèichéngniánrén bǎohù fǎ hé jiǔ nián zhì yìwù jiàoyùfǎ, wèichéngniánrén tóngyàng xiǎngyǒu shòu jiàoyù de quánlì, xuéxiào, shèhuì, jiātíng yǒu yìwù ràng wèichéngniánrén dúshū. Chén lǜshī rènwéi, Ānyóu Xiǎoxué de zuòfǎ shì wéifǎn yǒuguān fǎlǜ fǎguī de, xuésheng jiāzhǎng wánquán kěyǐ tōngguò fǎlǜ tújìng wèi qí háizi tǎo huí gōngdào.

sources:

At least 40% of people in PRC can’t speak Mandarin: official

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The head of China’s department charged with getting everyone in the country to speak Mandarin admitted on Monday that at least 40 percent of those in the PRC can’t speak the country’s official language.

A survey from 2004 gave the figure of 47 percent of China’s population able to speak Mandarin. Even assuming that figure is correct (not a wise thing to do with PRC statistics), I doubt there has been much of a change since then.

The figures include those who are not native speakers of the language and may not speak it often.

Yuan Zhongrui, director of the Mandarin popularization department under the Ministry of Education, said that those who cannot speak Mandarin “are mainly those with ‘little education,’ or ‘the illiterate,’ and most of them are rural residents.” This describes the majority of the country’s population — and also those hardest to reach with Mandarin programs.

China is unlikely have all of its population speak Mandarin any time in the foreseeable future, an official from the same department admitted earlier this year.

sources and further readings:

Festschrift for John DeFrancis now available for free

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Most readers of Pinyin News will already know of John DeFrancis, editor of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary and author of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy and many other important works. (If you haven’t read The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy yet, order it now.)

In recognition of the 95th(!) birthday today of Professor DeFrancis, Sino-Platonic Papers is rereleasing Schriftfestschrift: Essays in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday. Previously, this important compilation, which runs more than 250 pages, was available only in a printed edition priced at US$35. The fifteenth-anniversary edition, however, is being released for free as a PDF (15 MB — so have a fast Internet connection, or a lot of patience).

I’d like to draw special attention to an article written in Pinyin: “Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi,” by Zhang Liqing. (Zhang’s work also appears here on Pinyin Info, in her translations of The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts and of the amazing Comparing Chinese Characters and a Chinese Spelling Script — an evening conversation on the reform of Chinese characters.)

Feel free to print out a copy of the Schriftfestschrift for your own use or for inclusion in a library. Just don’t sell it.

The original publication contained several color photos. I’ll add those later. Also, the English tex is searchable to some degree, as I used OCR after scanning these pages; but the results weren’t perfect.

Here are the contents:

  • Tabula Gratulatoria
  • Introduction, by Victor H. Mair
  • Publications of John DeFrancis
  • Hanzi Bu Tebie Biaoyi, by Zhang Liqing
  • Typology of Writing Systems, by Zhou Youguang
  • Dui Hanzi de Jizhong Wujie, by Yin Binyong
  • The Information Society and Terminology, by Liu Yongquan
  • A Bilingual Mosaic, by Einar Haugen
  • The Polysemy of the Term Kokugo, by S. Robert Ramsey
  • Memorizing Kanji: Lessons from a Pro, by J. Marshall Unger
  • Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, by David Moser
  • Ethnolinguistic Notes on the Dungan, by Lisa E. Husmann and William S-Y. Wang
  • Korean Views on Writing Reform, by Wm. C. Hannas
  • Language Policies and Linguistic Divergence in the Two Koreas, by Ho-min Sohn
  • Okinawan Writing Systems, Past, Present, and Future, by Leon A. Serafim
  • Proposal of a Comparative Study of Language Policies and Their Implementation in Singapore, Taiwan, and China (PRC), by Robert L. Cheng
  • The Topical Function of Preverbal Locatives and Temporals in Chinese, by Feng-fu Tsao
  • Yes-No Questions in Taipei and Peking Mandarin, by Robert M. Sanders
  • Patronizing Uses of the Particle ma: Bureaucratic Chinese Bids for Dominance in Personal Interactions, by Beverly Hong Fincher
  • Gender and Sexism in Chinese Language and Literature, by Angela Jung-Palandri
  • A zhezi Anagram Poem of the Song Dynasty, by John Marney
  • Some Remarks on Differing Correspondences in Old Chinese Assumed to Represent Different Chinese Dialects, by Nicholas C. Bodman
  • Can Taiwanese Recognize Simplified Characters?, by John S. Rohsenow
  • Simplified Characters and Their (Un)relatedness, by Chauncey C. Chu
  • The Teaching of Culture and the Culture of Teaching: Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities in Language Instruction, by Eugene Eoyang
  • The Culture Component of Language Teaching, by Kyoko Hijirida
  • Thinking About Prof. John DeFrancis, by Apollo Wu
  • Wo suo Renshi de De Xiansheng, by Chih-yu Ho
  • Two Poems for Professor John DeFrancis, by Richard F. S. Yang
  • Announcement, by Stephen Fleming

Happy birthday, John! And many happy returns!

Aborigines: tuzhu vs. yuanzhumin

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In May, a delegation of Aborigines from Taiwan attended the Fifth U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. (Of course, since the United Nations shuns Taiwan, the delegates were able to attend only by registering with a U.S. NGO.) The delegates raised objections to the U.N.’s Mandarin translation of “original inhabitants”/”indigenous peoples” as tuzhu.

The UN’s translation calls Aborigines tu chu [tǔzhù] (土著), which has negative and barbaric implications, the representatives said. They requested the UN instead use yuan chu min [yuánzhùmín] (原住民), which is the term used in this country. Although both terms are translated into English as “original inhabitants,” tu chu [tǔzhù] was too derogatory, they said.

(I’ve added correct Pinyin above in red between square brackets.)

This is not the first time groups have voiced this complaint to the United Nations. (See the sources below.)

Here are some comparative frequencies of use:

total within .tw domains within .cn domains
土著
(tuzhu)		 1,130,000 59,500 283,000
原住民
(yuanzhumin)		 2,520,000 1,210,00 112,000
土著+原住民
(both tuzhu and yuanzhumin)		 49,300 12,000 6,140

Although tuzhu gets used much less of the time in Taiwan than yuanzhumin, it still shows up in significant numbers. So, what’s so bad about tuzhu? Do Taiwan’s aborigines use that word to refer to other people, just not themselves? If so, why? Which word is older? Why the difference between usage in Taiwan and China, and when did it arise?

I don’t have answers here, just questions.

sources:

English tips from the school formerly known as Peking University

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old logo of Peking UniversityPeking University, China’s most prestigious school, has announced that it is planning a change. First, the school’s logo will be redesigned. The original was made by Lu Xun, who was apparently not just a great writer and an impassioned advocate of romanization and critic of Chinese characters but also an artist.

Significantly, the new logo design will feature a different English name: the University of Beijing. This is especially interesting because “Peking University” had officially remained as such in English despite China’s official adoption of Hanyu Pinyin.

Moreover, “Beijing University,” which would match the Mandarin Chinese name of Beijing Daxue (English and Mandarin have much the same syntax), is not to be used except in informal contexts. Instead, the name is to be the “University of Beijing.” That is, according to the school, because in formal English names the place name has to come after “college” or “university”:

Běijīng Dàxué zài shuōmíng zhōng zhǐchū, gēnjù Yīngyǔ yǔfǎ guīzé, dìmíng zuòwéi xíngróngcí de xuéxiào míngzi wǎngwǎng zhǐshì yòngyú kǒuyǔ de jiǎnchēng, ér zài zhèngshì de shūmiànyǔ zhōng zé yīnggāi jiāng dìmíng zuòwéi míngcí zhìyú “xuéyuàn” huò “dàxué” zhīhòu.
(北京大学在说明中指出，根据英语语法规则，地名作为形容词的校名往往只是用于口语的简称，而在正式的书面语中则应将地名作为名词置于“学院”或“大学”之后。)

Danwei, where I first spotted this story, has helpfully translated one delightfully arch reaction to this English lesson.

Evidently the professors at PKU’s English department will have to give new names to the following British and American universities according to PKU’s English grammar rules:

Princeton University, New York University, Boston University, Syracuse University, Lancaster University, Coventry University, Cranfield University, Bournemouth University, Keele University, Middlesex University, Roehampton University, Athabasca University, Brandon University….

Would the leaders of PKU please inform the leaders of those universities the next time they meet with them? Some, like like Princeton University, New York University and such, are considerably more famous than PKU. Try to have them follow PKU’s English grammar rule first, and then it can become a wordwide rule of English grammar, and PKU can have a world-leading innovation.

Heh.

Before I close, here are a couple more points:

  • Peking is not the Wade-Giles spelling for what in Hanyu Pinyin is Beijing. (The Wade-Giles spelling for Beijing is Pei-ching, which never caught on in English.)
  • The correct way to write 北大 in Pinyin is Bei-Da, not Bei Da or Beida. Short forms of proper nouns take a hyphen, according to the rules for hyphens in Pinyin.

sources:

What Chinese characters can’t do-be-do-be-do

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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that “shuing”!

David Moser uses the question of how would someone scat sing in Mandarin Chinese to start off an exploration of what Chinese characters can’t do well (and what Pinyin can).

Here’s an excerpt:

English has numerous conventions for representing casual oral speech: “Are you kiddin’ me?” “Whaddya wanna do tonight, Marty?” “I’m gettin’ outta here!” “Gimme that.” And so on. Such spelling conventions have been employed in the literature of most alphabetic traditions for hundreds of years, and are often an invaluable link to the vernaculars of the past. English-language writers from Mark Twain to James Joyce have used the flexibility of the alphabet to vividly re-created various speech worlds in their works. It is, in fact, hard to imagine how much of the literature of the West could have been produced without recourse to such devices.

Chinese characters, by contrast, cannot reproduce the equivalent elisions and blends of colloquial Chinese, except in rare cases, and only at the level of the syllable…. The result is that China effectively has no tradition of realistically notating vernacular speech. Wenyanwen ???, classical Chinese, exerted a virtual stranglehold on written literature up until the early twentieth century, and even then, most writers did not attempt to accurately represent common speech, despite the appearance of an occasional Lao She or Ba Jin. But even if such writers had so desired, working within the Chinese system of writing, they could never have notated the sounds of the language around them with the same kind of vivid verisimilitude of the following examples in English….

Read the whole article, here on Pinyin Info: Some Things Chinese Characters Can’t Do-Be-Do-Be-Do.

And if you haven’t seen it already, be sure to check out another work by Moser: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, which is one of Pinyin Info’s most popular readings.