{"id":42956,"date":"2019-05-29T06:27:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T11:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=42956"},"modified":"2021-11-18T19:46:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T00:46:52","slug":"is-mandarin-easy-to-learn-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=42956","title":{"rendered":"Is Mandarin easy to learn after all?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Betteridge's law of headlines<\/a> states: \"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no<\/i>.\"\u00a0 The title of this post ends in a question mark, but, as its author, I mean for it to be answered by the word yes.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Early yesterday morning, I posted \"Fluent bilingualism in Singapore<\/a> \" (5\/28\/19).\u00a0 Less than six hours later, around noon, I posted \"Difficult languages and easy languages, part 2<\/a> \" (5\/28\/19).\u00a0 Both posts fortuitously touched upon the real or imagined difficulty of Mandarin, the former allegedly attested in the poor record of getting Singaporean students of Chinese ancestry to attain fluency in the language and the latter in the results of a large scale survey on the perceived difficulty of languages carried out two years ago on Language Log.\u00a0 In both cases, Mandarin came out looking as though it were a very hard language to learn.
\nAs someone who has studied many languages (from Sanskrit to Russian, German, Japanese, etc.), I felt that Mandarin was easier than all of them.\u00a0 The grammar and morphology are simpler than the other languages I learned; because I have a good (musical, I suppose you could say) ear, the tones didn't pose a real problem; images and terminology tend to be more concrete (less abstract) than in most other languages I tackled; the spoken prosody is a great boon to understanding (parsing) sentences (to this day, even for Literary Sinitic \/ Classical Chinese, which I've been teaching for more than four decades), I can tell right away if a student misconstrues a sentence by the rhythm with which he \/ she reads it); etc.<\/p>\n

Above all, from the very beginning, I stubbornly refused to think of Mandarin as a language composed of monosyllabic Sinographs<\/b>, but as a language made up of monosyllabic (a small proportion), disyllabic (the vast majority), and trisyllabic (or higher number of syllables) words<\/b>. Thus first, as I like to put it, I learned Mandarin the way a baby does, as a spoken language, eschewing the customary emphasis on the Sinographs that plagues Chinese and Japanese language teaching around the world.<\/p>\n

Thus I was deeply gratified when Neil Kubler<\/a>, one of the master teachers of Mandarin of our generation, commented on both of the posts under discussion.\u00a0 What he wrote is of such profound importance that I highlight his remarks by quoting them here:<\/p>\n

From the Singapore bilingualism pos<\/a>t:<\/p>\n

The Chinese language learning situation for most ethnic Chinese in Singapore is neither L1 (Chinese as first language, as in China) nor L2 (Chinese as second language, as in China) but rather something in between, sometimes described as L1.5. Especially for the younger generation, English is dominant; the general direction of Chinese in S'pore is moving from L1.5 toward L2. This is probably inevitable, no matter what the government and schools do, given that English is used almost exclusively as the language of the government and the work place \u2014 plus the crucial need to respect the mother tongues and cultures of the other major ethnicities in Singapore, the Malays and the Indians. As regards the learning of Chinese, the anonymous correspondent is correct that Hanyu Pinyin should be given greater emphasis at the initial stages of reading and writing and that a greater effort should be made to locate or create \"important, interesting texts.\" So contrary to the views of many conservative, traditional Singaporean educators (and teachers who have been brought in from China and Taiwan), there should be lots of texts all in Pinyin, written as a language, not as a transcription for characters (pengyou NOT peng you). However, the correspondent mentions only TEXTS; it is not texts but SPEECH that must have the greatest emphasis, since written language is based on spoken language. The overall tone of the post is also a little unfair to the government and thousands of dedicated Chinese language teachers in Singapore who have been making concerted and moderately successful efforts to teach Chinese to citizens of ethnic Chinese background, including adopting the most modern teaching methods, effectively using educational technology, and engaging hundreds of advisors from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, North America, and Europe. If it weren't for these efforts, the position of Chinese in Singapore would be even more precarious than it already is. Yes, political leaders there don't have a consistently accurate, scientific understanding of how the Chinese language (writing system included) really works, but in my work there as advisor for 10+ years, I have found they actually understand more about language than political leaders in many other countries; and, without a doubt, Singaporeans overall have better basic communicative skills in more languages than citizens of most countries.<\/p>\n

From the easy and difficult languages post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When I worked at FSI (the U.S. State Department training institution that came up with Categories I to V that Professor Mair describes above), we on 2 or 3 occasions had to curtail students' training assignments from 88 to 44 weeks due to illness on the part of the officers at posts whom they were being trained to replace. To help them attain the highest possible level in speaking in the shortest amount of time, we transcribed into Pinyin all the Chinese characters in their speaking and reading textbooks and materials (including newspaper readers, so they could discuss international news, etc.). The students were able in half the normal amount of time to reach the regular training goal of S-3 in speaking (though obviously not in reading, which must be in the official Chinese writing system, which currently is still Chinese characters). This experiment seemed to demonstrate, though admittedly with a very small sample, that if Chinese were romanized beginning tomorrow (which it could be, if written more or less as spoken), then training time for native speakers of English could be cut IN HALF!<\/p>\n

This is precisely what I have been pleading with Chinese educational and governmental authorities for the last three decades and more, namely, that they provide massive amounts of reading materials in Romanization and in Sinographs with phonetic annotations for each character, but parsed correctly according to the official orthographic rules.<\/p>\n

This is also what Alex Wang, the father of two young boys in the Shenzhen school system and a regular contributor to Language Log, has been calling for during the past few years.<\/p>\n

I have little doubt that wherever such practices are instituted, whether in Singapore, Hong Kong, the PRC, America, or elsewhere, students' ability to learn Mandarin efficiently will be greatly enhanced, and there will be far less suffering and mindless copying of Hanzi (t\u012bngxi\u011b \u542c\u5199 [\"dictation\"]).<\/p>\n

It is also worth noting that Neil Kubler is a member of the famous \"Cornell School\" of East Asian language pedagogy presided over by Eleanor Jorden<\/a> (1950 PhD under Bernard Bloch<\/a> at Yale), whose members include Ron Walton, Galal Walker, Mari Noda, Jerry Packard, Jim Unger, and many others (not all of whom studied at Yale, but who adhered to Jorden's precepts.*\u00a0 Another giant of East Asian language teaching who subscribed to the same tenets of emphasizing spoken language over written language in the early learning process was John DeFrancis (1948 PhD from Columbia, but with substantial influence from George A. Kennedy<\/a> at Yale, where he received his BA degree).<\/p>\n

As I've reiterated countless times, Mandarin is the easiest spoken language I've ever learned, but by far the most difficult written language (other than Literary Sintitic \/ Classical Chinese, which I'll write a separate post about within a day or two) I've had to deal with.<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/b><\/p>\n

[note from Neil Kubler]<\/p>\n

Jorden is sometimes misunderstood as being in favor of Romaji as opposed to standard written Japanese but, as you understand, that is not at all the case. For training in reading, she insisted on authentic written Japanese — no Romaji, no \"rebus\" method, no katakana and hiragana only when normal written Japanese would use kanji. She was 100% for authentic written Japanese, but only when students were ready, meaning after they had a very solid foundation in spoken Japanese — and for that her textbooks had only Romaji for the Japanese portions (but that was only for reference, not as a major focus of spoken learning, which of course had to be based on…SPEAKING and listening, either of live native speakers or audio recordings).<\/p>\n

[note from Neil Kubler]<\/p>\n

Jorden was trained at Yale, as was John DeFrancis. It's interesting to try to trace back who influenced whom and what influenced what. There is no doubt that American structural\/descriptive linguistics (Sapir, Bloomfield, Bloch, and in his own brilliant way Y.R. Chao) had a deep impact on the teaching of Chinese and Japanese in the US (and even in Asia) as did WWII and the army Asian language programs.<\/p>\n

Yet many younger teachers of Chinese in the US know little or nothing about this extensive and complex background and believe everything of value is 1980s or later!<\/p>\n

Of course there has been progress in many areas, but some excellent programs already existed many decades ago. (I'm thinking here of FSI in the 1950s and Cornell in the 1960s, but I suspect your own experiences also fall into this category.) Vice versa, there are plenty of seriously deficient programs around today that clearly haven't learned some of the \"lessons of the past.\"<\/p>\n

Readings<\/b><\/p>\n

\"How to learn Chinese and Japanese<\/a>\" (2\/17\/14)<\/p>\n

\"Beyond fluff<\/a>\" (3\/19\/17) \u2014 esp. this comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Learning languages is so much easier now<\/a>\" (8\/18\/17) \u2014 esp. this comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\"How to learn Mandarin<\/a>\" (7\/17\/18)<\/p>\n

\"How to learn to read Chinese<\/a>\" (5\/25\/08) \u2014 esp. this comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\"How not to learn Chinese<\/a> \" (4\/16\/17)<\/p>\n

\"Learning to read and write Chinese<\/a> \" (7\/11\/16)<\/p>\n

\"The future of Chinese language learning is now<\/a>\" (4\/5\/14)<\/p>\n

\"The new paperless revolution in Chinese reading<\/a>\" \u00a0(4\/8\/15)<\/p>\n

\"Chinese without a teacher<\/a>\" (2\/6\/16)<\/p>\n

\"Ruby phonetic annotation for Cantonese<\/a>\" (5\/6\/19)<\/p>\n

\"Phonetic annotations as a welcome aid for learning how to read and write Sinographs<\/a>\" (4\/26\/19) \u2014 with dozens of additional posts on the value of phonetic annotation listed in the \"Readings\" section at the end<\/p>\n

\"Spelling mistakes in English and miswritten characters in Chinese<\/a>\" (12\/18\/12) \u2014 esp. this comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Homographobia<\/a>\" (9\/27\/10) \u2014 thanks be to John DeFrancis<\/p>\n

\"Homophonophobia<\/a>\" (2\/7\/15) \u2014 esp. the penultimate paragraph of this comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard<\/a>\" (8\/91)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (\u7b80\u4f53\u5b57\uff1a\u4e3a\u4ec0\u4e48\u4e2d\u6587\u8fd9\u4e48TM\u96be\uff1f<\/a>)<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (\u7e41\u9ad4\u5b57\uff1a\u70ba\u4ec0\u9ebc\u4e2d\u6587\u9019\u9ebcTM\u96e3\uff1f<\/a>)<\/h3>\n

\"Learn Nepali<\/a>\" (9\/21\/16)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Betteridge's law of headlines states: \"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.\"\u00a0 The title of this post ends in a question mark, but, as its author, I mean for it to be answered by the word yes. Early yesterday morning, I posted \"Fluent bilingualism in Singapore \" […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-teaching-and-learning"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42956"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52697,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42956\/revisions\/52697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}