Chinglish: the Esperanto of the 21st Century?
向世界推广汉语，增进世界各国对中国的了解 (promote the Chinese language abroad and help every country in the world to get a better understanding of Chinese culture) is the motto that can be found on the homepage of the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL).
The globalization of English and the active promotion of Mandarin by the Chinese government has implications for how the world will communicate some decades from now. Trusting China will claim an increasingly important role on the global stage, it is equally safe to assume that the importance of its language will benefit from this development. The Chinese are proud of their culture and historical feats, whereof the language is the main expression. Efforts to romanize the Chinese language were shortly contemplated in the 1950s but soon abandoned and put in the closet. It would be comparable to replacing the English spelling by another phonetic system. It goes against the grain of the language.
Thus I foresee a bright future for Chinese and I foresee that the Chinese language will no longer be the sole domain of the Chinese people. As a result, the price of the ´´commodity´´ Chinese will rise.
From the time China first started admitting international students inside its borders, these students often spoke to one another in Chinese. One reason was that many of them had a non-Western background, meaning they did not necessarily speak English. A second reason was that speaking Chinese with fellow students was a good way to practice the language they had come to learn. Of course English was still used on many occasions. If there were such a thing as a lingua franca in that setting, the term Chinglish is what would most accurately describe it.
With a growing number of people studying Chinese (according to some estimates, 30 million at the moment and 100 million within five years), the language is bound to change to some degree. Few will deny that Chinese is a complex language and some research suggests a primary school student in China can only write a quarter of what his/her peers in the West know. Because of its inherent complexity, the Chinese language is not easily mastered by Westerners, and thus a form of abstracted and simplified communication will develop between learners of Chinese among themselves as well as between the ´´foreign´´ and the “native” speakers. The advent of computers also contributes to the chinglification process. Many Chinese no longer write characters with their former ease and contemporary email communication is a far cry from wenyan (文言) and even baihua (白话).
The fact that Westerners rarely master Chinese does not imply its use will remain confined to China. What it means is that Chinese is becoming a language that is internalized by more and more Westerners, who make many mistakes. Even the ´´big noses´´ with Chinese spouses rarely speak it perfectly. Some of the foreigners export their newly-acquired linguistic and cultural baggage back to their home countries, making sure that Chinese is de facto becoming a world language, starting in the neighboring countries of China. Sooner or later, this new category of ``foreign´´ users will consider this language their own; a language that nobody has the right or ability to interfere with or take away from them. This increasing number of ``foreigners´´ will not abash from using ´´their´´ language in public, even when not spoken fluently. Thus, like we see a great variety in English dialects (not only the traditional division between American and British English, but also Australian and Indian English, and now also the accent with which English is spoken in China), a greater variety in Chinese will develop, resulting in what one could call international Chinese or 国际中文 (as opposed to the terms 普通话 putonghua or 国语 guoyu).
The concept of English or Esperanto as a sole vehicle for international communication is an ethnocentric way of looking at the world and underestimates the contemporary role of China. Seeing Chinese as the future number one world language is equally wrong. A yin-yang formula, the two complementing and enriching each other, seems to describe better the need for some sort of lingua franca. Out go Esperanto or English, in comes Chinglish?
Key to successful language learning
Chinese speakers to truly attain English proficiency, they must be in contact with excellence in English language usage. As there is a dearth of such experts available in the schools of Chinese speaking countries, the alternative approach is through reading English books, the most neglected part of Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. The present system emphasizes oral English accompanied by memorized vocabulary and rules of grammar. Needless to say, the result is far from the production of competent speakers of English.
Books offer a host of solutions to second language acquisition. Subject, level of difficulty etc. can permit teachers to use books to match the individual interest and ability of the learner. Since these books are the product of excellent writers, the level of the language is also excellent and students can be exposed to the best English available. Progressive reading leads automatically to a great increase of second language comprehension. Vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns and speech patterns are learned unconsciously. Reading in their mother tongue was the way most Westerners learned their ‘grammar’. What most of them know is that something looks right or wrong, without any true understanding of grammar, syntax etc. Simultaneously, students become aware of the underlying culture. No language can be divorced from the culture that produced it. To understand the English language, one needs the cultural context to provide meaning.
English, Spanish, Chinglish, Spanglish
At the present moment more people speak Spanish as a first language than do those who speak English. Yet the influence of English on Spanish is much greater than vice versa, the latter limiting itself to the occasional taco or burrito. Spanglish on the other hand is becoming increasingly common, its spread facilitated by immigrant groups working in the United States. Another danger that lies ahead for the language of the conquistadors is the chinglification process. Chinese and English (chinglish), not Spanish, are the main China trade languages employed in South America. At the same time, hundreds of millions of Chinese are learning English, a necessary tool to work or study abroad, preferably in an English-speaking country. Considerable numbers will settle in these countries and start families. Over the next few generations, English will increasingly become their mother tongue, and Spanish, the second most widely spoken language today, will begin to cede its place to English.
Chinese Students Return to Teach English
A large number of Chinese students who have completed their studies abroad, are being lured back to the mainland to help satisfy the voracious appetite for English language skills in China. There are many success stories. In one such school cutting edge technology is used, a computerized phonetic system. Students can better distinguish how to pronounce English words correctly. The electronic display correlates the curve pattern (visually displayed) with that of the one orally produced by the student, who can instantly evaluate his ‘distance’ from the ‘ideal’ pronunciation. As there are very few expatriates or foreigners with excellent pronunciation, the value of this approach is incalculable; it can be used individually, easily and expertly.
Another reason there is such a strong desire to improve English language skills is the world entering China, through human visitors and the international news media, in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. It is a golden opportunity for China to reveal a modern culture and well-educated populace. There will be an unprecedented increase in the interaction of locals and foreigners. There will also be enormous challenges catering to the linguistic needs of those coming. Over 150,000 Chinese students have returned from overseas and can be mobilized to help.
Many of these Chinese students obtained degrees and English language skills in the English-speaking countries where they studied. They also gained expertise in education, high-technology, finance and multi-nationalism etc. This reservoir of talent and knowledge feeds the industrial/educational infrastructure and permits Chinese students to start enterprises on their own, or preferably through joint ventures. Often, when foreign technology must be used, it is rapidly integrated into the Chinese working world. Industrial zones have been created for this very purpose.
Improvements in management skills, essentially imported, have improved to the point where previous problems in infrastructure no longer exist in many areas. Students who have combined management training skills, attained abroad, with their English language ability, have bright career prospects.
Essentially, China has fostered an organized exodus of students to all the industrialized countries of the world, although predominantly on the USA. Now these talented and educated people will be able to repay the motherland by adding their contacts and insights into the marvel of a Chinese renaissance.
Helping this renaissance become a reality, and the Olympics a resounding success also requires technological solutions to the language problems inherent in the cultural exchange which is occurring between East and West. There are emerging websites, like chinglish.com which are specifically geared towards coping the enormous volume of communication, particularly in the areas of international business, education, tourism and e-mails. The need is for two-way instantaneous translation of Chinese to English and vice versa, married to the particular language requirements, such as linguistic access. The new portal will permit a Chinese student, tourist or businessman to access a foreign e-mail address in Chinese, and have the message received in English by his Western counterpart. Communication between the Chinese and English-speaking worlds, for all practical purposes, will be incredibly simplified.
Chinglish.com and the language barrier
In the world of scholarly research and publication, whether in academic or business environments, the universal language has remained English. This presents both an opportunity and a hurdle for Chinese language researchers whose work must undergo translation and its related vicissitudes, followed by proofreading, hopefully done by a competent native speaker. This tortuous path to gaining access to the world of international research published in English, is cumbersome for Chinese scholars whose English is often very good, but insufficient for perfectly correct written work. An entire industry has sprung up to cater to the English language needs of professors, researchers and scholars whose native language is other than English.
Gargantuan efforts are made to deal with the English language barrier, its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and correct writing style. It is no exaggeration to state that many careers have been arrested due to a lack of English proficiency. The obvious solution to this problem lies in the improvement of electronic translation services which could handle the bulk of ordinary communication needs. Specialized reports and difficult to translate documents would still require the human touch. One of the biggest areas requiring instant and acceptable translation is in business email.
Companies like chinglish.com are introducing bilingual sites with translation services and language learning aids, such as examples of usage, sources of information presented etc. Companies around the world can use these sites to directly and immediately communicate with their Chinese counterparts. Sites like Chinglish also provide for foreign companies or individuals to obtain a Chinese name email address which would bridge the gap between Chinese and English language email access.
Chinglification at its worst
In its eagerness to chinglify, the Shanghai city government has managed the impossible: altogether replacing the mother tongue with a foreign language. There have been complaints from citizens who could no longer find their way to a public toilet in certain areas because Chinese signs had been replaced with English ones, in order to accommodate the foreign tourist instead of having the two languages co-exist as in other areas of Shanghai public life.
Chinglification in one hundred years
Beijing is speeding up its campaign to make the city more accessible to foreigners. Taxi drivers are compelled to study English on penalty of losing their licenses if they are incapable of communicating in basic English by 2008. New road and museum signs are written in both Chinese and English. A hotline was even installed for residents to complain about wrong usages of English in public life. The city has taken it upon itself to remove any traces of ´contaminated´ English. How long will it take before New York, London, or Sydney have to take similar actions and remove ´bad´ Chinese from their street signs?