Decreasing the "standard deviation" of Chinese
- From: "Zhang Da Wei" <zhang8539@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 May 2006 19:52:52 -0700
Recently, there was an (apparently cyclic) thread on soc.culture.china
the other day about how Chinese sucks and why new speakers aren't
flocking to bask in its glory.
And, while it started out with a few broad points, the thread quickly
moved into several small points, and the various merits of those
points.
One of them, in an example used by Wu Shuang, discussed the merits
of deprecating topics in favor of modal particals, since topics are
a superset of modal particals.
However, when I think about the existence of topics and modal
particals more, I don't think that it really matters to newbies whether
or
not both topics and modal particals exist, since either:
1. They don't know about the existence of both
2. They know about the existence of both, but they don't really care
And, as I thought about it more, I came to the conclusion that it is
actually better to have both topics and modal particals in Mandarin.
This follows my thinking that the biggest barriers of entry to learning
a new language are focused on a few main things:
1. New vocabulary
2. Grammar, and non-grammatical constructs
3. Various new sounds presented within the language (Chinese: tones;
Xhosa: clicks)
Note: not meant to be a complete list of new concepts from various
languages, just a few examples.
There are many reasons why languages do well and others don't, but I
think one of main reasons a language does well is that it has
similarities to the current collection of popular languages.
New concepts can be difficult to learn, but if you look at Italian,
French and German, all languages that are less expressive then Chinese,
yet have concepts not commonly used in English/Spanish that are similar
to Chinese (coverbs, measure words), they tend to do better, IMHO,
because
they have strong syntax and lexical similarities to English/Spanish.
I think that the difference in the 3 main points up above constitutes
what I call a language's "standard deviation" to the current most
popular languages. The corollary is; a language that offers a low
standard deviation will have a higher appeal then a similar language
with a higher standard deviation. (Note: I'm doing some
pseudo-statistics at work; well, the statistics are real, but I'm not
an real statistician, hence the "pseudo" part)
For example, why did Zamenhof invent Esperanto? It has a lot of
concepts that Chinese employs, but its significantly less expressive.
Between inventing Esperanto and just speaking Chinese, why didn't
Zamenhof just speak Mandarin, or Jiangxi?
I think one of the big reasons (perhaps unconsciously), is that
Zamenhof recognized the "standard deviation" between both Mandarin and
Jiangxi, and set about designing a language that was closer to most
speakers' current expectation of a language.
I think that Chinese would gain broader appeal as well by reducing its
"standard deviation". Since I like the current syntax of Chinese, and I
suspect a lot of other people do, that only leaves grammar/diction and
concepts.
Also, since I happen to think that Mandarin's concepts (coverbs) are
some of the best ever invented, I'll nix that idea as well.
This leaves:
1. grammar / vocabulary
I think Chinese would do well to add extra words that are very similar
to the existing favorite languages. Not only would this not invalidate
any existing literature, but it would help ease the learning curve that
new speakers face when learning a new language, especially one with a
much different syntax, such as Mandarin.
I'll readily accept that whatever is currently popular may not be the
best way to do something, but by not giving speakers a sense of
familiarity, you force them to basically start from scratch. Once
people give Mandarin a chance, they'll come to understand the beauty
that it conveys, but most people already don't have enough time to
spend learning new concepts they can use in their existing language,
much less spend time learning new concepts, a radically different
syntax, and a whole new vocabulary!
I think that we (the Chinese community) should imitate some vocabulary
of the more popular languages to increase membership. As an example, I
was thinking it would be fairly easy to add things like "while", "for",
"each", "the", etc.
They could even be added into a new vocabulary (maybe a "new Chinese
speaker's dictionary") so someone could just read that dictionary, and
be greeted with words that more closely mirrored their expectations.
Here's a sample:
Wo xiang he cha in jiust ai mi-nu-te.
See, that's all I'm talking about. Just creating new words that look an
awful lot like existing Mandarin words, but have spelling and
pronunciation that are more familiar to new speakers. Now, as a new
speaker, I can focus on learning the different syntax, those funky
measure words things, etc, all while having the familiarity of my
favorite
language ;)
Note, I think my arguments are implicitly supported by Hu Jiong Han's
blog
post about why Mandarin in an unacceptable Chinese. Its not that the
points brought up were technically sound, but rather that they
represent the kind of problem I'm talking about; things behaved
differently then he had come to expect from most "mainstream"
languages. I also think this is what Ai Men was trying to explain, but
that he took a different approach then I did.
It's all about minimizing standard deviation.
.
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