Danke, Deutschland
In China, a large amount of the citizens of a good sized city are likely to know some smattering of English. According to my calculations which I performed while walking down the street over the past three years, EVERY citizen of China knows the word "hello," no matter if they live in Beijing or a hut in a gorge off the side of the railroad tracks running through Ugyr country. They absorb it because it is there, on signs, in songs and sometimes coming out of the mouths of foreigners somewhere closeby.
This is kind of like how just about every American gets to where they "speak a little Spanish." I used to think that meant a ten word vocabulary NOT counting foods. Then I sat down one evening and found that my new DVD of "Homewrecker" was in Cantonese with Spanish subtitles and damned if the thing didn't make sense. Then I realized that we (normal people) internalize a whole truckload of ambient language.(*) I can remember sitting in the doctor's office in Cave Spring reading a bilingual notice about payment options over and over again. I had already read all the magazines.
A friend of mine in college once made a commercial for his Spanish class. It was for car bond paint:
BONDO BONDO BONDO
ES MUY EXCELLENTE
ES MUY MUY BUENO
POR SU CAMIONETA
O SU CARRO!
This jingle just popped into my head as I was typing this entry. I remember the whole thing. ISN'T THAT SCARY??
Chinese people pick up snippets of English cause it's around. It's here, in whatever mangled form and it seeps in. The English proficiency of your average Chinese person who has never studied English (beyond some classes at age 7 from a teacher who doesn't speak English) doesn't even begin to approach the grip an unschooled American has on Spanish simply because we have immigrants. Most of us could put together a passable, correct Spanish sentence if we had to. It'd be simple, but it'd work. This is not the case in China. I predict this will change.
At a snail's pace.
Why? German.
I have a couple of classes I give all incoming Freshmen about the origin of the English language. I teach them how to find the language root of the words as a key to meaning. This works 80% of the time. Most often, though, we come to discover that a monstrous amount of words in English are Germanic or Latin in origin. No news to you; earthshattering for Chinese freshmen.
Chinese has roots in......nothing. Nowhere. It's from here. It was always like this. It is the alpha and omega. There's no "spelling." There are no telltale vowel combinations, prefixes or suffixes. Outside of some bizarre words stolen directly from English over the past 20 years or so (internet, olympics, Michael Jyeh-Kuh-Son) there's nothing in the Chinese language that hints that there is anything in the world outside of the country of China, or anyone else besides the Chinese people.*
*(The word "Insular" is from the Latin insularis, "of or pertaining to an island," or "being cut off from intercourse with other nations.")
Recently my boyfriend
sunjianmin had a choice between studying Japanese or German as his foreign language for this semester. He went with Japanese, cause it'd be more "useful." He should have gone with German, because learning German when you already speak English is like learning "English Ultra Expansion Pack." My German friend the_reda laughs when I message her in bogus German, but laughter wouldn't happen if I was COMPLETELY off the mark, now, would it?
It's not that both of us posess superior Western brainpans made so by the diversity of the mutt-crossbreed English language we both grew up with. That's not what I'm saying at all. I didn't even just write that sentence, actually. No, I'm not saying that. And I'm not saying that everyone in the world besides China has a leg up on learning foreign languages simply because everyplace but China has been COMMUNICATING with each other since the dawn of time.
Another thing I'm not saying is that insulated cultures are jerking themselves off thinking they can catch up linguistically by sending their progeny to compulsive English Prison Classes taught by people who paid other better-but-still-unintelligible speakers of English to take their certification exams for them while the entire country still gives foreigners walking down the street the big hairy eyeball. "Open" country, my ass.*
*(The word "superior" is from both French AND Latin!)
Included in this entry is a piece of spam I received this evening, which set this whole rant off and running. Read, and enjoy. It's in German mostly, but don't let that stop you. You'll get the gist of it.
Ficke Dich durch das größte Tittenparadies und genieße viele tausend Bilder und Videos...
Jede Menge Trailer und jede Menge Titten. Titten Ficks ohne Ende
und auch Gruppenaction wartet nur auf Dich.
Richtig fette Titten und verdorben geile Girls brauchen knallharten Sex,
der die dicken Birnen ordentlich zum Schwingen bringt.
And in case you didn't get that whatsoever, I've consulted Babelfish to make things a little clearer.
Ficke you by the largest Tittenparadies and enjoys many thousand pictures and videos...
Each quantity of Trailer and each quantity of Titten. Titten Ficks without end and also Gruppenaction
waits only for you. Correctly fat Titten and spoiled geile Girls needs bang-hard Sex, which brings the thick pears properly to swinging.
I would like now to point out that a program created specifically to translate text probably didn't tell you anything you didn't already guess. Except for the swinging pears part. I don't think any of us expected *that*.
(*) The term "ambient language" is mine. I made it.
This is kind of like how just about every American gets to where they "speak a little Spanish." I used to think that meant a ten word vocabulary NOT counting foods. Then I sat down one evening and found that my new DVD of "Homewrecker" was in Cantonese with Spanish subtitles and damned if the thing didn't make sense. Then I realized that we (normal people) internalize a whole truckload of ambient language.(*) I can remember sitting in the doctor's office in Cave Spring reading a bilingual notice about payment options over and over again. I had already read all the magazines.
A friend of mine in college once made a commercial for his Spanish class. It was for car bond paint:
BONDO BONDO BONDO
ES MUY EXCELLENTE
ES MUY MUY BUENO
POR SU CAMIONETA
O SU CARRO!
This jingle just popped into my head as I was typing this entry. I remember the whole thing. ISN'T THAT SCARY??
Chinese people pick up snippets of English cause it's around. It's here, in whatever mangled form and it seeps in. The English proficiency of your average Chinese person who has never studied English (beyond some classes at age 7 from a teacher who doesn't speak English) doesn't even begin to approach the grip an unschooled American has on Spanish simply because we have immigrants. Most of us could put together a passable, correct Spanish sentence if we had to. It'd be simple, but it'd work. This is not the case in China. I predict this will change.
At a snail's pace.
Why? German.
I have a couple of classes I give all incoming Freshmen about the origin of the English language. I teach them how to find the language root of the words as a key to meaning. This works 80% of the time. Most often, though, we come to discover that a monstrous amount of words in English are Germanic or Latin in origin. No news to you; earthshattering for Chinese freshmen.
Chinese has roots in......nothing. Nowhere. It's from here. It was always like this. It is the alpha and omega. There's no "spelling." There are no telltale vowel combinations, prefixes or suffixes. Outside of some bizarre words stolen directly from English over the past 20 years or so (internet, olympics, Michael Jyeh-Kuh-Son) there's nothing in the Chinese language that hints that there is anything in the world outside of the country of China, or anyone else besides the Chinese people.*
*(The word "Insular" is from the Latin insularis, "of or pertaining to an island," or "being cut off from intercourse with other nations.")
Recently my boyfriend
sunjianmin had a choice between studying Japanese or German as his foreign language for this semester. He went with Japanese, cause it'd be more "useful." He should have gone with German, because learning German when you already speak English is like learning "English Ultra Expansion Pack." My German friend the_reda laughs when I message her in bogus German, but laughter wouldn't happen if I was COMPLETELY off the mark, now, would it?
It's not that both of us posess superior Western brainpans made so by the diversity of the mutt-crossbreed English language we both grew up with. That's not what I'm saying at all. I didn't even just write that sentence, actually. No, I'm not saying that. And I'm not saying that everyone in the world besides China has a leg up on learning foreign languages simply because everyplace but China has been COMMUNICATING with each other since the dawn of time.
Another thing I'm not saying is that insulated cultures are jerking themselves off thinking they can catch up linguistically by sending their progeny to compulsive English Prison Classes taught by people who paid other better-but-still-unintelligible speakers of English to take their certification exams for them while the entire country still gives foreigners walking down the street the big hairy eyeball. "Open" country, my ass.*
*(The word "superior" is from both French AND Latin!)
Included in this entry is a piece of spam I received this evening, which set this whole rant off and running. Read, and enjoy. It's in German mostly, but don't let that stop you. You'll get the gist of it.
Ficke Dich durch das größte Tittenparadies und genieße viele tausend Bilder und Videos...
Jede Menge Trailer und jede Menge Titten. Titten Ficks ohne Ende
und auch Gruppenaction wartet nur auf Dich.
Richtig fette Titten und verdorben geile Girls brauchen knallharten Sex,
der die dicken Birnen ordentlich zum Schwingen bringt.
And in case you didn't get that whatsoever, I've consulted Babelfish to make things a little clearer.
Ficke you by the largest Tittenparadies and enjoys many thousand pictures and videos...
Each quantity of Trailer and each quantity of Titten. Titten Ficks without end and also Gruppenaction
waits only for you. Correctly fat Titten and spoiled geile Girls needs bang-hard Sex, which brings the thick pears properly to swinging.
I would like now to point out that a program created specifically to translate text probably didn't tell you anything you didn't already guess. Except for the swinging pears part. I don't think any of us expected *that*.
(*) The term "ambient language" is mine. I made it.