Why do people in China learn English? And why don't foreigners learn Chinese?

In retrospect, the theory of "European language and culture center" was rampant, and the survival of Chinese characters was once in crisis. At the beginning of the 20th century, Qian proposed to abolish Chinese characters and advocate the complete westernization of language and culture. 1936, 10 in may, 2000, "our opinions on popularizing new characters" led by Cai Yuanpei and signed by 688 cultural celebrities such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo and Mao dun was published in China language, which downgraded Chinese characters to "unicycle" and praised pinyin new characters as "airplane". Until modern times, this cry is still endless. For example, Confucius, an overseas scholar, believes that Chinese characters, Chinese grammar, Chinese vocabulary and Chinese pronunciation all have shortcomings, and we still have to take the road of introducing western languages.

If we can look at the general trend and compare Chinese and western languages in a down-to-earth way, we will find that the above views or suggestions are neither feasible nor necessary.

Language has always been the carrier of culture, technology and economy. With the strengthening of China's national strength and the revival of its culture, Chinese characters are bound to show their strength. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Education of China, the number of Chinese learners worldwide has exceeded 30 million. So far, more than 2,500 universities and more and more primary and secondary schools in 100 countries around the world have offered Chinese courses. In less than two years, the number of Confucius Institutes in the world has exceeded 100, covering more than 50 countries and regions. By 2065, 438+00, 500 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms will be built around the world. By 2004, the number of foreign candidates for the Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) has reached 65,438+million, and 1 test center has been set up in 34 countries, while the Business Chinese Test (BCT) and Children's Chinese Test (YCT) are also in full swing.

Professor John Sinclair, a linguist at Birmingham University, believes that Chinese will appear in the list of leaders in the future language world. When China becomes a world-class economic power, many people will feel that "learning Chinese is more natural and reasonable than learning English". (Youth Reference199565438+127 October)

On the cultural level, Chinese characters are the main recording symbols in China cultural circle, which shows that they are irreplaceable. For example, Xinhua News Agency, Seoul1February, 999 10:9, the South Korean government decided to resume the use of Chinese characters and Chinese character marks that have disappeared for many years in the fields of official documents and traffic signs to adapt to the world trend. On the 9th, the Korean Minister of Culture and Tourism, Shin Lejun, put forward a plan to promote the dual use of Chinese characters in the State Council. The plan points out that in order to develop Korean traditional culture, promote exchanges among countries in the cultural circle of Chinese characters, and promote the development of tourism, official documents written entirely in Korean will be changed into Korean and Chinese, so as to solve the problem that Korean is difficult to express its meaning. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who presided over the meeting, said: "If we ignore Chinese characters, it will be difficult to understand our classical culture and traditions. It is necessary to use Korean and Chinese characters at the same time." Chinese characters have been used for a long time in Korean history. After entering the modern society, Koreans and China people are still mixed together. 1948, the Korean authorities promulgated the Law on Special Usage of Proverbs, which stipulated that all documents should not use Chinese characters, which caused many problems.

South Korea still has to do this. If China cancels Chinese characters, it will undoubtedly push thousands of years of traditional culture into the abyss.

Aside from external factors such as national strength and culture, if we go back to the writing itself, we can find the advantages of Chinese characters different from pinyin, thus laying an international foundation:

1. It has both meaning and sound, and integrates image thinking and abstract thinking to fully develop the brain. 80% of Chinese characters are ideographic pictophonetic characters, which significantly expands the amount of information recorded.

2. Remember the same number of words, Chinese characters need one third of the time as English. (Qin, 1999)

3. The length ratio between Chinese and English is between 1: 1.78 and 1.2, and the reading speed is 1.6 times that of English. (Lin, Li, 1998) This is because Chinese characters are a two-dimensional combination of strokes, which makes full use of paper space and looks compact, while alphabetic characters are a one-dimensional arrangement of letters, which looks loose and lengthy.

4. Because Chinese characters are concise and informative, they are more conducive to computer processing. Now the input speed of Chinese characters has reached 600 to 750 words per minute.

5. Flexible word formation and strong combination. This is also due to the structure of two-dimensional combination of Chinese characters, even if several words are juxtaposed, they will not feel lengthy; At the same time, the rich pronunciation of Chinese (three times that of English) makes Chinese characters monosyllabic and effectively controls the number of words. However, English can't overcome these problems and can only be solved by coining words, resulting in a large number of new words and lack of regularity.

6. Chinese characters are arranged neatly, which is convenient for typesetting and has the artistic beauty of calligraphy.

Chinese characters have not only the sound and meaning system of the world characters, but also a separate form and meaning system, and the form and meaning system of Chinese characters stores more cultural information than the sound and meaning system, which is unmatched by any phonetic writing form. (Huang Xunzhai, 1988)

The ideal character should be a symbol with unit form, which can record both pronunciation and semantics, and Chinese characters are such a kind of language mark, so Chinese characters are the best characters for human beings. (Qin, 1998)

From the semiotic point of view, Chinese characters can also be made into a universal international character symbol. (Zhang)

1In August, 1986, an article entitled "The Revival of Chinese" in Newsweek reported that "the revival of Chinese has begun, which will affect the cultural and economic activities in various regions of Asia ..." The advantage of Chinese is that it may become an international visual symbol. "Electronic paper" has appeared, and we can write directly on the computer screen with an electronic mouse or light pen. The biggest advantage of electronic paper is that it can keep the writing order, so it is easier for computers to recognize Chinese characters. Electronic paper will help the emergence of "printing on demand" e-books, which will solve the inventory problem that plagues publishers. (Shanghai Translation News 1995 1.2)

Ishii Xun, president of the Japanese Association for the Promotion of Chinese Character Education, said: "... no Chinese character is as systematic and logical as Chinese characters. Chinese characters are the only thing in the world that can think with eyes and understand even when spoken differently. In the future, Chinese characters may become one of the popular languages in the world. "