Chinese as a foreign language
Encyclopedia
Chinese as a foreign or second language is the study of the Chinese languages by non-native speakers. Increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Standard Chinese
as a foreign language, the official languages of mainland China
and Taiwan
. However the teaching of Chinese both within and outside China is not a recent phenomenon. Westerner
s started learning different Chinese language
s in the 16th century. Within China, Mandarin
became the official language of China in 1924. Mandarin also became the official language of Taiwan after the Kuomintang
took over control from Japan
after World War II.
In 2005, 117,660 non-native speakers took the Chinese Proficiency Test
, an increase of 26.52% from 2004. From 2000 to 2004, the number of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland taking Advanced Level exams in Chinese increased by 57%. An independent school in the UK made Chinese one of their compulsory subjects for study in 2006. Chinese language study is also rising in the United States. The USC U.S.-China Institute cited a report that 51,582 students were studying the language in US colleges and universities. While far behind the more than 800,000 students who study Spanish, the number is more than three times higher than in 1986. The Institute's report includes graphs and details on the popularity of other languages.
China has helped 60,000 teachers promote its language internationally, and an estimated 40 million people are now studying Chinese as a second language around the world.
Other than Mandarin
, Cantonese
is also offered in Hong Kong and in some oversea Universities, especially in UK and North America.
The understanding of the Chinese language in the West began with some misunderstandings. Since the earliest appearance of Chinese character
s in the West, the belief that written Chinese was ideographic
prevailed. Such a belief led to Athanasius Kircher
's conjecture that Chinese characters were derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs
, China being a colony of Egypt. John Webb, the British architect, went a step further. In a Biblical vein similar to Kircher's, he tried to demonstrate that Chinese was the Primitive or Adamic language
. In his An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language (1669), he suggested that Chinese was the language spoken before the confusion of tongues
.
Inspired by these ideas, Leibniz
and Bacon
, among others, dreamt of inventing a characteristica universalis
modelled on Chinese. Thus wrote Bacon:Leibniz placed high hopes on the Chinese characters:
The serious study of the language in the West began with the missionaries
coming to China during the late 16th century. Among the first were the Italian Jesuits
Michele Ruggieri
and Matteo Ricci
. They mastered the language without the aid of any grammar books or dictionaries, and are often viewed as the first Western sinologist
s. The former set up a school in Macau
, the first school for teaching foreigners Chinese, translated part of the Great Learning
into Latin
, the first translation of a Confucius
classic in any European language, and wrote a religious tract in Chinese, the first Chinese book written by a Westerner. The latter brought Western sciences to China, and became a prolific Chinese writer. With his amazing command of the language, Ricci impressed the Chinese literati and was accepted as one of them, much to the advantage of his missionary work. Several scientific works he authored or co-authored were collected in Siku Quanshu
, the imperial collection of Chinese classics; some of his religious works were listed in the collection's bibliography, but not collected.
Ricci and Ruggieri, with the help of the Chinese Jesuit Lay Brother Sebastiano Fernandez (also spelled Fernandes; 1562–1621), are thought to have created the first Portuguese-Chinese dictionary some time during 1583-88. Later, while travelling on the Grand Canal of China
from Beijing
to Linqing
during the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640) and Sebastiano Fernandez, compiled a Chinese-Portuguese dictionary as well. In this latter work, thanks to Cattaneo's musical ear, a system was introduced for marking tones of the romanized Chinese
syllables with diacritical marks. The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants was made clear as well (by means of apostrophes, as in much later Wade-Giles
system). Although neither of the two dictionaries were published (the former only was found in Vatican archives in 1934, and published in 2001, and the later has not been found so far), Riicci made the transcription system developed in 1598, and in 1626 it was finally published, with minor modifications, by another Jesuit Nicolas Trigault
in a guide for new Jesuit missionaries. The system continued to be in wide use throughout the 17th and 18th century. It can be seen e.g. in several Romanized Chinese texts (prepared mostly by Michael Boym and his Chinese collaborators) that appeared in Athanasius Kircher
's China Illustrata.
The transcription of the Nestorian Stele can be found in pp. 13-28 of China Illustrata, which is available online on Google Books. The same book also has a catechism
in Romanized Chinese, using apparently the same transcription with tone marks (pp. 121-127)
The earliest Chinese grammars were produced by the Spanish Dominican
missionaries. The earliest surviving one is by Francisco Varo
(1627–1687). His Arte de la Lengua Mandarina was published in Canton
in 1703. This grammar was only sketchy, however. The first important Chinese grammar was Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare
's Notitia linguae sinicae, completed in 1729 but only published in Malacca
in 1831. Other important grammar texts followed, from Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat's Élémens (sic) de la grammaire chinoise in 1822 to Georg von der Gabelentz's Chinesische Grammatik in 1881. Glossaries for Chinese circulated among the missionaries from early on. Robert Morrison's A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, noted for its fine printing, is one of the first important Chinese dictionaries
for the use of Westerners.
In 1814, a chair of Chinese and Manchu
was founded at the Collège de France
, and Abel-Rémusat became the first Professor of Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire
. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones
dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt
studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor.
The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language started in the People's Republic of China
in 1950 at Tsinghua University
, initially serving students from Eastern Europe. Starting with Bulgaria
in 1952, China also dispatched Chinese teachers abroad, and by the early 1960s had sent teachers afar as Congo
, Cambodia
, Yemen
and France
. In 1962, with the approval of the State Council
, the Higher Preparatory School for Foreign Students was set up, later renamed to the Beijing Language and Culture University
. The programs were disrupted for several years during the Cultural Revolution
.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, there are 330 institutions teaching Chinese as a foreign language, receiving about 40,000 foreign students. In addition, there are almost 5,000 Chinese language teachers. Since 1992 the State Education Commission has managed a Chinese language proficiency exam program
, which has tested over 142,000 persons.
, Japanese
and Korean
. A quote attributed to William Milne, Morrison's colleague, goes that learning Chinese is
Several major difficulties stand out:
contains 47,035 characters . However, most of the characters contained there are archaic and obscure. The Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese
, promulgated in People's Republic of China
, lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. Moreover, most Chinese characters belong to the class of semantic-phonetic compounds, which means that one can know the basic meaning and the approximate reading of most Chinese characters, after acquiring some elementary knowledge of the language.
Still, Chinese characters pose a problem for learners of Chinese. To the 17th-century Protestant theologian Elias Grebniz, the Chinese characters were simply diabolic. He thought they were:
In Gautier
's novella Fortunio, a Chinese professor from the Collège de France, when asked by the protagonist to translate a love letter suspected to be written in Chinese, replied that the characters in the letter happen to all belong to that half of the 40,000 characters which he has yet to master.
s , namely the first tone (flat or high level tone, 阴平, denoted by " ¯ " in Pinyin
), the second tone (rising or high-rising tone, 阳平, denoted by " ˊ " in Pinyin), the third tone (falling-rising or low tone, 上声, denoted by " ˇ " in Pinyin), and the fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone, 去声, denoted by " ˋ " in Pinyin). Indeed, there is a fifth tone called neutral (轻声，denoted as no-mark in Pinyin) although the official name of the tones is Four Tones. Other Chinese dialects have more, for example, Cantonese
has six (not nine: the other three are not "tones" in the English sense of the word). In most Western languages, tones are only used to express emphasis or emotion, not to distinguish meanings as in Chinese. (A notable exception is Norwegian, which has two tones that differentiate meaning, for instance "bønner" (beans or prayers) and "bønder" (farmers), both being pronounced the same, except for the use of tones.) A French Jesuit, in a letter, relates how the Chinese tones cause a problem for understanding:
, supervised by Hanban
(the National Office For Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), is responsible for promoting the Chinese language in the West and other parts of the world. Hanban runs a Confucius Institute Online(http://www.chinese.cn) offering over 10,000 Chinese language learning resources.
The People's Republic of China
began to accept foreign students from the communist countries (in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa) from the 1950s onwards. Foreign students were forced to leave the PRC during the Cultural Revolution
. Taiwan
has long been a place for students to study Mandarin. Today's popular choices for the Westerners who want to study Chinese abroad include the Beijing Language and Culture University
in Beijing
and the Mandarin Training Center (MTC)
and International Chinese Language Program (ICLP, formerly the Stanford Center)
in Taiwan
. The latter was especially popular before the 1980s when mainland China had yet to open to the other parts of the world.
Several Standard Chinese
courses are available online through various commercial web sites specifically catering to native English speakers. Free and Paid-for courses are also offered via podcast
s. Software is also available to help students pronounce, read and translate Chinese into English and other languages.
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
as a foreign language, the official languages of mainland China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. However the teaching of Chinese both within and outside China is not a recent phenomenon. Westerner
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
s started learning different Chinese language
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
s in the 16th century. Within China, Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
became the official language of China in 1924. Mandarin also became the official language of Taiwan after the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
took over control from Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
after World War II.
In 2005, 117,660 non-native speakers took the Chinese Proficiency Test
Hànyu Shuipíng Kaoshì
The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, , abbreviated as HSK, is the People's Republic of China's only standardized test of Standard Chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers, namely foreign students, overseas Chinese, and members of ethnic minority groups in China...
, an increase of 26.52% from 2004. From 2000 to 2004, the number of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland taking Advanced Level exams in Chinese increased by 57%. An independent school in the UK made Chinese one of their compulsory subjects for study in 2006. Chinese language study is also rising in the United States. The USC U.S.-China Institute cited a report that 51,582 students were studying the language in US colleges and universities. While far behind the more than 800,000 students who study Spanish, the number is more than three times higher than in 1986. The Institute's report includes graphs and details on the popularity of other languages.
China has helped 60,000 teachers promote its language internationally, and an estimated 40 million people are now studying Chinese as a second language around the world.
Other than Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, Cantonese
Cantonese
Cantonese is a dialect spoken primarily in south China.Cantonese may also refer to:* Yue Chinese, the Chinese language that includes Cantonese* Cantonese cuisine, the cuisine of Guangdong province...
is also offered in Hong Kong and in some oversea Universities, especially in UK and North America.
History
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s in the West, the belief that written Chinese was ideographic
Ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.Examples of...
prevailed. Such a belief led to Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine...
's conjecture that Chinese characters were derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
, China being a colony of Egypt. John Webb, the British architect, went a step further. In a Biblical vein similar to Kircher's, he tried to demonstrate that Chinese was the Primitive or Adamic language
Adamic language
The Adamic language is, according to certain sects within Abrahamic traditions, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, i.e., either the language used by God to address Adam, or the language invented by Adam ....
. In his An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language (1669), he suggested that Chinese was the language spoken before the confusion of tongues
Confusion of tongues
The confusion of tongues is the initial fragmentation of human languages described in the Book of Genesis 11:1–9, as a result of the construction of the Tower of Babel....
.
Inspired by these ideas, Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
and Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, among others, dreamt of inventing a characteristica universalis
Characteristica universalis
The Latin term characteristica universalis, commonly interpreted as universal characteristic, or universal character in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts...
modelled on Chinese. Thus wrote Bacon:Leibniz placed high hopes on the Chinese characters:
The serious study of the language in the West began with the missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
coming to China during the late 16th century. Among the first were the Italian Jesuits
Jesuit China missions
The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of...
Michele Ruggieri
Michele Ruggieri
Michele Ruggieri was an Italian Jesuit priest. One of the founding fathers of the Jesuit China missions, and a co-author of the first Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, he can be described as the first European sinologist.-Formation years in Europe:Before entering the Society of Jesus Michele...
and Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....
. They mastered the language without the aid of any grammar books or dictionaries, and are often viewed as the first Western sinologist
Sinology
Sinology in general use is the study of China and things related to China, but, especially in the American academic context, refers more strictly to the study of classical language and literature, and the philological approach...
s. The former set up a school in Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
, the first school for teaching foreigners Chinese, translated part of the Great Learning
Great Learning
The Great Learning was one of the "Four Books" in Confucianism. The Great Learning had come from a chapter in the Classic of Rites which formed one of the Five Classics. It consists of a short main text attributed to the teachings of Confucius and then ten commentary chapters accredited to one...
into Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, the first translation of a Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
classic in any European language, and wrote a religious tract in Chinese, the first Chinese book written by a Westerner. The latter brought Western sciences to China, and became a prolific Chinese writer. With his amazing command of the language, Ricci impressed the Chinese literati and was accepted as one of them, much to the advantage of his missionary work. Several scientific works he authored or co-authored were collected in Siku Quanshu
Siku Quanshu
The Siku Quanshu, variously translated as the Imperial Collection of Four, Emperor's Four Treasuries, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, or Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, is the largest collection of books in Chinese history and probably the most ambitious editorial...
, the imperial collection of Chinese classics; some of his religious works were listed in the collection's bibliography, but not collected.
Ricci and Ruggieri, with the help of the Chinese Jesuit Lay Brother Sebastiano Fernandez (also spelled Fernandes; 1562–1621), are thought to have created the first Portuguese-Chinese dictionary some time during 1583-88. Later, while travelling on the Grand Canal of China
Grand Canal of China
The Grand Canal in China, also known as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is the longest canal or artificial river in the world. Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou...
from Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
to Linqing
Linqing
Linqing is a county-level city within the prefecture-level city of Liaocheng in western Shandong Province, China. It is located north-northwest of the prefectural capital Liaocheng. The city proper has about residents , whereas Linqing County as a whole had inhabitants in 1999. The city is...
during the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640) and Sebastiano Fernandez, compiled a Chinese-Portuguese dictionary as well. In this latter work, thanks to Cattaneo's musical ear, a system was introduced for marking tones of the romanized Chinese
Romanization of Chinese
The romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
syllables with diacritical marks. The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants was made clear as well (by means of apostrophes, as in much later Wade-Giles
Wade-Giles
Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...
system). Although neither of the two dictionaries were published (the former only was found in Vatican archives in 1934, and published in 2001, and the later has not been found so far), Riicci made the transcription system developed in 1598, and in 1626 it was finally published, with minor modifications, by another Jesuit Nicolas Trigault
Nicolas Trigault
Nicolas Trigault was a Flemish Jesuit, and a missionary to China. He was also known by his latinised name Trigautius or Trigaultius, and his Chinese name Jīn Nígé .-Life and work:...
in a guide for new Jesuit missionaries. The system continued to be in wide use throughout the 17th and 18th century. It can be seen e.g. in several Romanized Chinese texts (prepared mostly by Michael Boym and his Chinese collaborators) that appeared in Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine...
's China Illustrata.
The transcription of the Nestorian Stele can be found in pp. 13-28 of China Illustrata, which is available online on Google Books. The same book also has a catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
in Romanized Chinese, using apparently the same transcription with tone marks (pp. 121-127)
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
missionaries. The earliest surviving one is by Francisco Varo
Francisco Varo
Francisco Varo was a Domincan monk, missionary in China, and author of the first grammar of Mandarin Chinese, "Arte de la lengua mandarina" . His Chinese names were Wan Fangjige 萬方濟 and Wan Jiguo 萬濟國.-Life:...
(1627–1687). His Arte de la Lengua Mandarina was published in Canton
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
in 1703. This grammar was only sketchy, however. The first important Chinese grammar was Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare
Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare
Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare was a Jesuit missionary to China. Born in Cherbourg, he departed for China in 1698, and worked as a missionary in the Guangxi region. In 1724, after the Chinese Rite Controversy, he was confined with his colleagues in Canton, and later banished to Macau, where he died...
's Notitia linguae sinicae, completed in 1729 but only published in Malacca
Malacca
Malacca , dubbed The Historic State or Negeri Bersejarah among locals) is the third smallest Malaysian state, after Perlis and Penang. It is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, on the Straits of Malacca. It borders Negeri Sembilan to the north and the state of Johor to the south...
in 1831. Other important grammar texts followed, from Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat's Élémens (sic) de la grammaire chinoise in 1822 to Georg von der Gabelentz's Chinesische Grammatik in 1881. Glossaries for Chinese circulated among the missionaries from early on. Robert Morrison's A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, noted for its fine printing, is one of the first important Chinese dictionaries
Chinese dictionary
Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for Chinese, and this article will introduce some of the most important...
for the use of Westerners.
In 1814, a chair of Chinese and Manchu
Manchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
was founded at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, and Abel-Rémusat became the first Professor of Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones
William Jones (philologist)
Sir William Jones was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages...
dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...
studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor.
The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language started in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
in 1950 at Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
, initially serving students from Eastern Europe. Starting with Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
in 1952, China also dispatched Chinese teachers abroad, and by the early 1960s had sent teachers afar as Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
, Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. In 1962, with the approval of the State Council
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
, the Higher Preparatory School for Foreign Students was set up, later renamed to the Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing Language and Culture University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beiyu , has the main aim of teaching the Chinese language and culture to foreign students. However, it also takes Chinese students specializing in foreign languages and other relevant subjects of humanities and social...
. The programs were disrupted for several years during the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, there are 330 institutions teaching Chinese as a foreign language, receiving about 40,000 foreign students. In addition, there are almost 5,000 Chinese language teachers. Since 1992 the State Education Commission has managed a Chinese language proficiency exam program
Hànyu Shuipíng Kaoshì
The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, , abbreviated as HSK, is the People's Republic of China's only standardized test of Standard Chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers, namely foreign students, overseas Chinese, and members of ethnic minority groups in China...
, which has tested over 142,000 persons.
Difficulty
Chinese is rated as one of the most difficult languages to learn for people whose native language is English, together with ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
. A quote attributed to William Milne, Morrison's colleague, goes that learning Chinese is
Several major difficulties stand out:
The characters (Hanzi)
The Kangxi dictionaryKangxi dictionary
The Kangxi Dictionary was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710. The creator innovated greatly by reusing and confirming the new Zihui system of 596 radicals, since then known as 596 Kangxi...
contains 47,035 characters . However, most of the characters contained there are archaic and obscure. The Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese
Xiandai Hanyu changyong zibiao
The List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese is a list of 7,000 commonly used Simplified Chinese characters in Chinese. It was created in 1988 in the People's Republic of China.It is comparable to the Standard Form of National Characters in Taiwan....
, promulgated in People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. Moreover, most Chinese characters belong to the class of semantic-phonetic compounds, which means that one can know the basic meaning and the approximate reading of most Chinese characters, after acquiring some elementary knowledge of the language.
Still, Chinese characters pose a problem for learners of Chinese. To the 17th-century Protestant theologian Elias Grebniz, the Chinese characters were simply diabolic. He thought they were:
In Gautier
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
's novella Fortunio, a Chinese professor from the Collège de France, when asked by the protagonist to translate a love letter suspected to be written in Chinese, replied that the characters in the letter happen to all belong to that half of the 40,000 characters which he has yet to master.
The tones
Mandarin Chinese has four toneTone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
s , namely the first tone (flat or high level tone, 阴平, denoted by " ¯ " in Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
), the second tone (rising or high-rising tone, 阳平, denoted by " ˊ " in Pinyin), the third tone (falling-rising or low tone, 上声, denoted by " ˇ " in Pinyin), and the fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone, 去声, denoted by " ˋ " in Pinyin). Indeed, there is a fifth tone called neutral (轻声，denoted as no-mark in Pinyin) although the official name of the tones is Four Tones. Other Chinese dialects have more, for example, Cantonese
Standard Cantonese
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese....
has six (not nine: the other three are not "tones" in the English sense of the word). In most Western languages, tones are only used to express emphasis or emotion, not to distinguish meanings as in Chinese. (A notable exception is Norwegian, which has two tones that differentiate meaning, for instance "bønner" (beans or prayers) and "bønder" (farmers), both being pronounced the same, except for the use of tones.) A French Jesuit, in a letter, relates how the Chinese tones cause a problem for understanding:
Homophones
Standard Chinese has a large number of homophones . For example, the pronunciation shì is associated with over 30 distinct morphemes, including 是 (copula), 市 (city), 事 (business, matter), 试 (try, attempt), 室 (room), and 视 (to see, sight). When homophones are encountered, the Chinese script helps distinguish between the different meanings, while homophones of other languages written with an alphabet or syllabary looks often the same. This is an advantage of the Chinese script, that it conveys meaning as well as (to a limited extent) sound.Where to learn
Chinese courses have been blooming internationally since 2000 at every level of education. Still, in most of the Western universities, the study of the Chinese language is only a part of Chinese Studies or sinology, instead of an independent discipline. The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is known as . The Confucius InstituteConfucius Institute
Confucius Institutes are non-profit public institutions that aim to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, as well as facilitating cultural exchanges. They are sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as France's...
, supervised by Hanban
HanBan
Hanban is the colloquial abbreviation for the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.- Administration :It is governed by the Office of Chinese Language Council International , a non-government and non-profit organization affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the...
(the National Office For Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), is responsible for promoting the Chinese language in the West and other parts of the world. Hanban runs a Confucius Institute Online(http://www.chinese.cn) offering over 10,000 Chinese language learning resources.
The People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
began to accept foreign students from the communist countries (in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa) from the 1950s onwards. Foreign students were forced to leave the PRC during the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
. Taiwan
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
has long been a place for students to study Mandarin. Today's popular choices for the Westerners who want to study Chinese abroad include the Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing Language and Culture University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beiyu , has the main aim of teaching the Chinese language and culture to foreign students. However, it also takes Chinese students specializing in foreign languages and other relevant subjects of humanities and social...
in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
and the Mandarin Training Center (MTC)
Mandarin Training Center
Mandarin Training Center is one of the world's oldest and most distinguished programs for Chinese language study. It is run by National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan.-History:...
and International Chinese Language Program (ICLP, formerly the Stanford Center)
International Chinese Language Program
The International Chinese Language Program is one of the world's premier institutions for intensive training in formal Mandarin, Taiwanese, Classical Chinese, and other Chinese languages...
in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. The latter was especially popular before the 1980s when mainland China had yet to open to the other parts of the world.
Several Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
courses are available online through various commercial web sites specifically catering to native English speakers. Free and Paid-for courses are also offered via podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
s. Software is also available to help students pronounce, read and translate Chinese into English and other languages.
Notable non-native speakers of Chinese
- Frederick W. BallerFrederick W. BallerFrederick William Baller was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, Chinese linguist, translator, educator and sinologist.- Missionary career:...
: British missionary, linguist, translator, educator and sinologist - L. Nelson BellL. Nelson BellLemuel Nelson Bell was a medical missionary in China and the father-in-law of famous evangelist Billy Graham. Few people had more influence on Billy Graham than Bell. -Life:Bell was born in Longdale, Virginia...
: American Missionary father-in-law of Billy GrahamBilly GrahamWilliam Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for... - John BirchJohn Birch (missionary)John Morrison Birch was an American military intelligence officer and a Baptist missionary in World War II who was shot by armed supporters of the Communist Party of China. Some politically conservative groups in the United States consider him to be a martyr and the first victim of the Cold War...
: American missionary and namesake of the John Birch SocietyJohn Birch SocietyThe John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing.... - Cường Để: Vietnamese prince
- John DeFrancisJohn DeFrancisJohn DeFrancis was an American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa....
: American linguist - DashanDashanDashan is the Chinese stage name adopted by Canadian Mark Henry Rowswell, CM who works as a freelance performer in People's Republic of China. Relatively unknown in the West, Dashan is the most famous Western personality in China's media industry. He occupies a unique position as a foreign...
: Canadian stage performer famous in China - Arif DirlikArif DirlikArif Dirlik is a historian most known for his works about 20th century Chinese history. Dirlik received a BSc in Electrical Engineering at Robert College, Istanbul in 1964 and a PhD in History at the University of Rochester in 1973.From 1971 until 2001 he stayed as a member of the History faculty...
: Turkish historian - Wolfram EberhardWolfram EberhardWolfram Eberhard was a professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley focused on Western, Central and Eastern Asian societies.-Biography:...
: German sociologist - Ai FukuharaAi Fukuharais a Japanese table tennis player sponsored by All Nippon Airways.-Table tennis career:Fukuhara began playing at the age of 3 and became a professional at age 10. The following year, she became the youngest player ever to become a member of the Japanese national team. Because of her age, she has...
: Japanese national table-tennis player - Timothy Geithner: United States Secretary of the TreasuryUnited States Secretary of the TreasuryThe Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, which is concerned with financial and monetary matters, and, until 2003, also with some issues of national security and defense. This position in the Federal Government of the United...
- Ronald GrahamRonald GrahamRonald Lewis Graham is a mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as being "one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years"...
: American mathematician - Ho Chi MinhHo Chi MinhHồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
: Vietnamese revolutionary - William HootkinsWilliam HootkinsWilliam Michael Hootkins was an American character actor, most famous for supporting roles in Hollywood blockbusters such as Star Wars, Batman and Raiders of the Lost Ark.-Early life:...
: American actor - Herbert HooverHerbert HooverHerbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
: American President - Jon Huntsman, Jr: US Ambassador to China; former Governor of UtahUtahUtah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
. - Bernhard KarlgrenBernhard KarlgrenKlas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods...
: Swedish sinologist - Kim Il-sungKim Il-sungKim Il-sung was a Korean communist politician who led the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death...
: North Korean dictator - Walter Henry MedhurstWalter Henry MedhurstWalter Henry Medhurst , was an English Congregationalist missionary to China, born in London and educated at St Paul's School, was one of the early translators of the Bible into Chinese language editions.-Early life:...
British missionary and translator - Joseph NeedhamJoseph NeedhamNoel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as a fellow of the British...
: English sinologist - Michiko NishiwakiMichiko Nishiwakiis a Japanese actress and stunt woman, martial artist, fight choreographer, and former female bodybuilder and powerlifter. She played stunt double for Lucy Liu in the film Charlie's Angels....
: Japanese actress - John RabeJohn RabeJohn Rabe was a German businessman who is best known for his efforts to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army during the Nanking Occupation and his work to protect and help the Chinese civilians during the event...
: German businessman, saved thousands of Chinese people from slaughter during the Nanking massacreNanking MassacreThe Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder, genocide and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing , the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second...
. - Timothy RichardTimothy RichardTimothy Richard was a British Baptist missionary to China, who influenced the modernisation of China and the rise of the Chinese Republic....
: American Baptist missionary - Sidney RittenbergSidney RittenbergSidney Rittenberg is an American journalist, interpreter and scholar who lived in China from 1944 to 1979. He worked closely with People's Republic of China founder Mao Zedong, military leader Zhu De, statesman Zhou Enlai, and other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party during the war, and was...
: American interpreter, Communist and businessman - Paul RobesonPaul RobesonPaul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
: American singer, actor and activist - Kevin RuddKevin RuddKevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...
: Australian Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister - Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn: Thai princess
- Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky: Russian-born Bishop of Shanghai
- Sidney ShapiroSidney ShapiroSidney Shapiro is an American-born author and translator who has lived in China since 1947. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is of Jewish ethnicity. He resides in Beijing, and is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Council...
: American translator; acquired Chinese citizenship. - Gary SnyderGary SnyderGary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
: American poet and essayist. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for PoetryPulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
. - Richard SorgeRichard SorgeRichard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He has gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged....
: Soviet spy - Mira SorvinoMira SorvinoMira Katherine Sorvino is an American actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Mighty Aphrodite and is also known for her role as Romy White in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.- Early life :Sorvino was born in Tenafly, New Jersey...
: American actress - George Thomas Staunton: English traveller, Orientalist and translator
- Hudson TaylorHudson TaylorJames Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...
: British missionary and founder of the China Inland MissionChina Inland MissionOMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:... - Elsie TuElsie TuElsie Hume Elliot Tu or Elsie Tu , GBM, CBE, is a prominent social activist, former elected member of the Urban Council of Hong Kong, and former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong...
: British-born Hong Kong politician - James VenerisJames VenerisJames George Veneris or Lao Wen , was a soldier in the American forces during the Korean War, was captured by the Chinese and was one of 21 US soldiers at the end of the war who decided they would rather stay in China than return to the US.Veneris had served in the South Pacific during World War...
: American Korean War veteran; settled in Shandong province after the war - Leehom Wang: American-born singer
- Samuel Wells WilliamsSamuel Wells WilliamsSamuel Wells Williams was a linguist, missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century.-Biography:...
: American missionary, linguist, and diplomat - Ruth WeissRuth WeissRuth F. Weiss, also known as Wèi Lùshī 魏璐诗, was a Jewish-born Austrian-Chinese educator, journalist, and lecturer...
: Austrian-born Chinese-naturalized journalist - Bob Woodruff: American television journalist, ABC News
External links
- "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard", David Moser