Should Americans Be Learning Chinese?美国人应该学习中文吗？
ChineseTime Shuai
美国人应该学习中文吗？
Should Americans Be Learning Chinese?
美国人应该学习中文吗？
First of all, apologies for the recent lack of updates. It is possible
this will continue. Your correspondent is currently rather sick, and
also in the process of packing to move back to America while looking
for jobs there teaching, if you can believe it, Chinese.
Yesterday Evan Osnos mentioned in a post of his that “only eleven per
cent of Americans think it is very important to learn Chinese, while
eighty-two per cent of Chinese think it is very important to learn
English.” This is according to surveyson foriegn policy views by the
Chicago Council. For comparison, 17% of Americans think it’s very
important for America to promote democracy in other countries.
As Osnos points out, there are signs that things are changing. Even
during this brutal recession, some schools are creating or expanding
their Chinese programs, and other schools that can’t currently afford
to do so admit that they are still facing increased demand for the
language. 11% is a fairly depressing number, but we can probably rest
assured that it’s rising.
Personally, I wonder if one of the main problems isn’t a stubbornly
widespread perception that Chinese is somehow “impossible”, especially
compared to other foreign languages. Granted, it perhaps looks and
sounds more intimidating than, say, French, but I wonder if some
Americans would change their minds if they knew that Chinese students
don’t have to memorize long tables of verb conjugations like French
students do, or puzzle over complex grammar manuals.
Anyone with experience traveling knows that English is the “world”
language, the default language used when two people who don’t share a
common language meet. It’s possible that will change, although a shift
would take many years, but does that really excuse Americans (or other
Westerners) from having to learn Chinese? What do you think?
美国人应该学习中文吗？
首先,我对于最近贫乏的更新致歉.这里还是会继续更新的.我最近病了,收拾行囊返回美国的进程中,然后在那儿找个教书的工作,你能相信么?
昨天,Evan Osnos在他的一篇文章中阐述到"仅有11%的美国人认为学习汉语十分重要,与此同时82%中国人认为学习英语十分重要."这份调查
来源于芝加哥外交政策委员会.相比之下,17%的美国人认为,对美国而言,推动促进其他国家的民主更加重要.
Osnos指出,这种状况有正在变化的迹象.甚至自从这个残酷的经济衰退期以来,一些学校正创立或扩充中文课程,其他的学校现在则不能做到这点.因此,
容许他们面临语言激增的需求.11%是一个相当保守的数字,但是我们大概可以保证这个数字是递增的.
个人而言,我想如果其中一个主要的问题不是顽固地普遍对中文的看法是"不可能"学会的,特别和其他外语对比起来.它或许被授予比起法语看上去和听上去更
加晦涩难懂.但是我想如果美国人能改变他们的思维,如果他们知道中国学生不必像法国学生记忆带有长串字母的动词形式,不必掌握复杂的语法规则.
任何一个有旅行经历的人都知道,英语是一门"世界"语言,当两个不使用同一种语言的人见面交谈时,默认为英语.这种状况将来或许能改变,虽然这种转变要
花很多年,但是美国人(或其他西方人)应该学习汉语吗?