Not Your Father’s Chinese.docVIP

Not Your Father?s Chinese The government?s first annual report on the evolution of the Chinese language contains some surprises The Chinese people are proud of their language, which they consider the most essential part of their civilization of 5,000 years. The charm of the language includes its ideographic writing system, in which the structure of the characters is directly related to their meaning, and the four-tone system in pinyin, the most common romanization system for Chinese, which endows the language with rhythmic beauty. For thousands of years, the Chinese language has been the incarnation of the nation?s unique mentality and the carrier of its long history. In May, the Ministry of Education and the National Language Work Committee under the State Council, China?s cabinet, jointly issued a paper titled “The Living Conditions of the Chinese Language (2005),” providing data on how Chinese characters are being used, what the most frequently used words are and how many characters one must know in order to read books and newspapers. The conclusion of the report, the first of its kind in the Chinese history, is that the language environment in China, in general, is healthy and harmonious. The report may bring good news for those learning Chinese as a foreign language. Despite the huge differences from Western alphabetic languages, Chinese is not difficult to learn. Li Yuming, an official from the Ministry of Education in charge of language administration, said, “Many people believe Chinese is a very complicated language. Actually, the Chinese language is among the easiest languages to learn.” His assertion is upheld by data in the report. Knowledge of the 581 most commonly used characters can cover 80 percent of daily conversation. To read 90 percent of the Chinese publications requires knowledge of only a bit more than 900 characters, while reading 99 percent of the Chinese publications needs 2,315 characters. But real life requires more