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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: ESPERANTO - SPAM SPAM SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM
Message-ID: <donhD9yzxv.9s9@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <donhD3v8EG.275@netcom.com> <3r70s7$16b2@hearst.cac.psu.edu> <donhD9v1K3.F72@netcom.com> <D9v555.DB0@spss.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 18:41:55 GMT
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Sender: donh@netcom6.netcom.com

markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <D9v555.DB0@spss.com>:
>In article <donhD9v1K3.F72@netcom.com>, Don HARLOW <donh@netcom.com> wrote:
>>The number of speakers of _putonghua_ (Mandarin Chinese, or more 
>>specifically the variant of it used as a national language in China) 
>>number on the order of one billion.
>>
>>Number of people who have studied English in school is _very_ large. This 
>>does not necessarily mean very much. For instance, in Japan almost every 
>>school child studies English for between four and ten years. Visitors to 
>>Japan regularly comment upon the fact that there are perhaps half a dozen 
>>people in the country who can speak English. (This is obviously an 
>>exaggeration, but it indicates a trend.) 
>
>The combination of extreme skepticism regarding anything relating to 
>English with extreme credulity regarding anything related to Chinese
>doesn't make for a very good effect, here.
>
The information about Chinese comes from friends of mine from that 
country (not all of whom speak Mandarin as a native tongue -- my best 
friend, who gave me the percentages, is a native Shanghainese speaker, 
who occasionally gets ticked off that, in this country, she won't be 
considered for jobs that require a speaker of Mandarin even though she 
speaks it as well as a native of Beijing). The information about Japan 
comes from Japanese friends, as well as from my own experience with 
Japanese programmers and reps of Japanese software firms.

>You seem to believe that intensive national education in English in 
>Japan is almost completely unsuccessful, while national education in
>putonghua(*) in China is completely successful.  How could that be?
>If Japanese education is so stunningly inferior to Chinese, how is it
>that literacy in Japan is much higher than in China?
>
You might make a distinction between a subject one learns in school 
without any real motivation (English in both Japan and China) and a 
subject that is needed to communicate within one's own society... I find 
that I did a heckuva lot better in mathematics than in Latin, and showed 
better results. I _knew_ that I would need mathematics. Also, I got 
started on it earlier -- everybody else knew that I would need it, too.

>*I hate to leave out the tones, but I don't trust my memory of them.
>Pu2tong1hua4, is it?
>
Hopefully, someone else can answer that...

>>Starting in about 1980, just 
>>about everybody in China wanted to learn English; American newspapers 
>>were full of articles (in the period 1981-on) about how more people in 
>>China were learning English than spoke the language in the entire rest of 
>>the world. By at least 1986, when I visited the country, with the 
>>exception of people working for CITS and in English departments at large 
>>universities, virtually _nobody_ spoke English. 
>
>Hmm, now we find that the Chinese, who are so wonderfully effective at
>teaching putonghua to people for whom it is effectively a foreign 
>language, miraculously lose this competence when teaching English.
>
Helps to start very, very young -- like when you enter school. English 
comes along much later -- much like Spanish, French, etc. do in the 
United States.

>While we're at it, let's make sure we're comparing like to like.  We're
>considering *speakers* of English in China; how about providing your
>sources on *speakers* of putonghua there, as opposed to, say, people who
>can understand it at the movies?

See above.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
http://www.webcom.com/~donh
