One way to get a sense of the difference between Chinese and English is to look at different English translations of classical Chinese works like the Dao De Jing.Of course, there is a big difference between classical literary Chinese and modern conversational Chinese, but the literary Chinese contains the essence of Chinese wisdom, so it still tells us something when you look at how differently different translators interpret it.Here are some examples. These are different translations of Ch. 2 of the Dao De Jing.Original (in simplified characters):天 下 皆 知 美 之 为 美 ， 斯 恶 已 。皆 知 善 之 为 善 ， 斯 不 善 已 。有 无 相 生 ， 难 易 相 成 ， 长 短 相 形 ，高 下 相 盈 ， 音 声 相 和 ， 前 后 相 随 。恒 也 。 是 以 圣 人 处 无 为 之 事 ，行 不 言 之 教 ﹔ 万 物 作 而 弗 始 ，生 而 弗 有 ， 为 而 弗 恃 ， 功 成 而 不 居 。夫 唯 弗 居 ， 是 以 不 去 。Translation by James Legge:All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have the idea of what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skilful, and in doing this they have the idea of what the want of skill is. So it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to the idea of the other; that difficulty and ease produce the one the idea of the other; that length and shortness fashion out the one the figure of the other; that the ideas of height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other; that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relation of one with another; and that being before and behind give the idea of one following another.Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech.All things spring up, and there is not one which declines to show itself; they grow, and there is no claim made for their ownership; they go through their processes, and there is no expectation of a reward for the results. The work is accomplished, and there is no resting in it as an achievement.The work is done, but how no one can see;'Tis this that makes the power not cease to be.Translation by Dwight Goddard:When every one recognizes beauty to be only a masquerade, then it is simply ugliness. In the same way goodness, if it is not sincere, is not goodness. So existence and non-existence are incompatible. The difficult and easy are mutually opposites. Just as the long and the short, the high and the low, the loud and soft, the before and the behind, are all opposites and each reveals the other. Translation by Patrick M. ByrneAs all under Heaven recognise the beautiful,So the detestable exists.As all under Heaven recognise the virtuous,So the spiteful exists.Truly:Being and Non-Being are born of each other,Difficulty and ease form one another,Long and short mutually defineHigh and low to each other incline,Tone and voice align,Front and back each other bind.Therefore, the sage conducts his affairs without actionAnd instructs without words.The ten-thousand-things are worked upon by himAnd he does not renounce them.He creates without havingAnd causes without depending upon.He accomplishes merit without dwelling therein.Isasmuch as he does not dwell therein,Neither does he depart.Translation from http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htmWhen the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arisesWhen it knows good as good, evil arisesThus being and non-being produce each otherDifficult and easy bring about each otherLong and short reveal each otherHigh and low support each otherMusic and voice harmonize each otherFront and back follow each otherTherefore the sages:Manage the work of detached actionsConduct the teaching of no wordsThey work with myriad things but do not controlThey create but do not possessThey act but do not presumeThey succeed but do not dwell on successIt is because they do not dwell on successThat it never goes awayTranslation by Richard Wilhelm:If all on earth acknowledge the beautiful as beautifulthen thereby the ugly is already posited.If all on earth acknowledge the good as goodthen thereby is the non-good already posited.For existence and non-existence generate each other.Heavy and light complete each other.Long and short shape each other.High and deep convert each other.Before and after follow after each other.Thus also is the Man of Calling.He dwells in effectiveness without action.He practices teaching without talking.All beings emergeand he does not refuse himself to them.He generates and yet possesses nothing.He is effective and keeps nothing.When the work is donehe does not dwell with it.And just because he does not dwellhe remains undeserted.Translation by D.T. Suzuki:Everywhere it is obvious that if beauty makes a display of beauty, it is sheer ugliness. It is obvious that if goodness makes a display of goodness, it is sheer badness. For:To be and not to be are mutually conditioned.The difficult, the easy, are mutually definitioned.The long, the short, are mutually exhibitioned.Above, below, are mutually cognitioned.The sound, the voice, are mutually coalitioned.Before and after are mutually positioned.Therefore:The holy man abides by non-assertion in his affairs and conveys by silence his instruction. When the ten thousand things arise, verily, he refuses them not. He quickens but owns not. He acts but claims not. Merit he accomplishes, but he does not dwell on it.Since he does not dwell on it It will never leave him.

Why does Japanese writing contain Chinese characters? And what are all the odd squiggles around the character in the sentence?The answer to the first question is actually simple. The Japanese at a certain point in history decided that they needed a writing system, and since they were copying so many other features of Chinese culture, apparently it seemed natural to them to copy Chinese writing.The answer to the second question is based on knowing something about the Japanese language, that made it a very poor fit with the Chinese system of writing.Japanese verbs and adjectives are conjugated. They have roots which take suffixes (much like English jump+ed or walk+ing) -- that signify whether a verb is positive or negative, polite or casual, passive or active, and then the verb tense -- present tense, simple past, past progressive, probable, probable progressive, and command forms. Japanese also uses particles that signify the function of nouns in the sentence -- grammatical subject, direct object, and topic marker. Words that are prepositions in English, such as "of," "from," "with," etc., are also treated as particles that follow a root word.Since Japanese could not express these elements with Chinese characters, it had to develop another writing system for these particles. Since elements that signify past tense, direct object, etc., have no intrinsic meaning but only change the meaning of another word, there was no way of representing them with ideograms. This is a phonetic system, a syllabary (each symbol represents a syllable, e.g., ta, ma, ka, etc.) This syllabary is called "hiragana." Those are the squiggly symbols between the characters.I have sometimes explained to English speakers the difference between Chinese and Japanese writing thusly:Suppose we English speakers wanted to adopt Chinese characters to write English. We could write "dog" as 狗 and "walk" as 笑,for example, no problem. But suppose we wanted to write "dogs" or "walking"? There is no character for -s or -ing. Aha! Let's write the "-s" and "-ing" in English! So "dogs" would be 狗s and "walking" would be 笑ing. We could write "The dogs are walking" as "The 狗s 是 笑ing." In effect, the developers of Japanese writing did something like this. The Chinese characters, which are called kanji, form the meaning-roots of most words and sentences, and the suffixes and grammatical particles are written in hiragana.(The Japanese also created another syllabary, called katakana, for transcribing foreign words.)This makes the Japanese writing system the most complex in the world. But it gets worse! Unlike Chinese, which has one pronunciation per character, Japanese can have different pronunciations for the same kanji (which is their name for Chinese characters). You have to know the meaning of the word before you can pronounce it -- something like, you have to know the meaning before you can pronounce "tears" in "He tears the paper" or "His eyes were full of tears." A kanji dictionary I had listed at least two, often three, sometimes even four pronunciations for the same kanji. Granted, many of the meanings were literary and not used much in everyday speech, and those literary readings were usually based on the Chinese pronunciation at the time the character was borrowed. When the Japanese borrowed Chinese characters, they usually borrowed the Chinese pronunciation AND also used the character to write their own native Japanese word, giving each character at least two pronunciations and sometimes more. So Chinese writing overall is a very poor fit for Japanese language, and that has given rise to the most complicated writing system in the world. Now, the Occidental mind might ask, "Well, if the Japanese have a phonetic writing system (the hiragana) why don't they just use it to write Japanese and forget about the Chinese characters?" To which Japanese schoolchildren would say YES! "Everyone hates kanji!" as a Japanese schoolgirl told me. Indeed, Japanese can be written completely with hiragana, or any word can be written with hiragana if you don't know the kanji, but in Japan that is considered a mark of poor education. Knowing kanji well is a sign of good education in Japan. So the Japanese children must learn the most complicated writing system in the world. But they do it. The human brain is infinitely capable. So that is the story of why the Japanese written language contains Chinese characters, mixed with other stuff.

Recently I read a post on CD that speculated on the reason why Japanese writing contains Chinese characters (mixed with otherwise unintelligible writing): that Japan was originally populated by migrants from China, and that they carried some memory of Chinese characters with them.Although it is probably likely that Japan was originally populated by migrants from China, that is not the explanation for why Chinese characters are part of Japanese writing. The Chinese and Japanese languages are completely different and unrelated -- as different from each other as any two languages on the planet. Chinese and Japanese are as different from each other as each of them is from English. From the point of view of Historical & Comparative Linguistics (the branch of Linguistic Science that deals with language change and tracing relationships among languages) it would take at least 8,000 years of separation for two language groups that were originally related to change so much that they showed no relationship at all. That means that, even if the Japanese are descended from migrants from China, it happened so long ago that Chinese characters had not yet begun to be developedSo then, what is the actual reason for the Chinese characters in Japanese writing? How are those characters used? Why are the Chinese characters in Japanese mixed up with different, unintelligible writing?I am writing this blog in two parts. The second part will answer the questions above. The first part will look at how different the Japanese language is from Chinese, because that has a lot to do with how Japanese writing evolved. I will also talk a little in Part One about the branch of Linguistic science called Historical and Comparative Linguistics, because Linguistic science is a very interesting subject for me personally, and I have a degree in it.Historical and Comparative Linguistics studies the process of language change. Historical and Comparative Linguistics studies the relationships among different languages, close and distant. For example, Spanish is obviously related to Italian, although the two languages are different. Spanish is also related to German, Russian and Sanskrit, but the relationship is not so obvious, pointing to a separation many more millennia in the past. By studying the geographic distribution of related languages and the speed of language change, Historical & Comparative Linguistics offers important clues about the past, including when different people migrated, where they originally came from and how long ago they arrived at their present location, and also how long ago they interacted with other groups that influenced their language. There are three areas of comparison among languages: the sound system, the vocabulary, and morphosyntax, or grammar. These characteristics change at different rates. Sound systems change the fastest and in a matter of centuries, two branches of a language group can develop very different phonemic systems. (See my blog on phonemes.) However, the changes are consistent: if a language group substutes an /n/ sound for an /r/ sound, it will happen consistently from word to word, not randomly with some words randomly changing one way and some words another way.Vocabulary can readily change through borrowing from other languages, but common everyday words change slowly; thus, most of the everyday language of English comes from Old English (Germanic) roots, while most of the academic-level vocabulary comes from French and Latin. Example: the everyday word "water" is related to the German "wasser," while the elements "aqua-" and "hydro-," which also mean water, come from Latin and Greek respectively, and if you count the dictionary words that contain "aqua-" and "hydro-," they will likely outnumber the words in the dictionary that contain "water." But if you count the number of times people say "water" every day compared to the number of times people say words containing "aqua-" or "hydro-" every day, "water" wins. This illustrates the fact that words that people use every day are the best clues to the ancestry of the language. Syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (how words are built up from their elements) change the least over time, Since these two things are related and are often studied together, the words are often combined as "morphosyntax," and morphosyntax is the best clue to ancient language relationships. As different as Greek, Farsi, Sanskrit and German seem to be, their morphosyntax is very similar -- they all belong to the Indo-European language phylum. It is like two animal species that may appear very different, but their skeletons reveal an underlying common ancestry. Morphosyntax is like the "skeleton" of a language, and is what persists the longest.In common language, morphosyntax is usually called "grammar," but linguistic scientists use the word "grammar" to refer to ALL of the rules and patterns of a language, not only the morphology and syntax. From here on I will use the word "grammar" for morphosyntax.So let us look at Japanese and compare these three aspects -- sound system, vocabulary, and grammar -- with Chinese.First: the sound system. The Japanese sound system is very different from Chinese. Most foreign learners find Japanese pronunciation to be easy (much easier than Chinese). Japanese has no tones, but vowels are phonemically lengthened (meaning that changing the length of the vowel can change the meaning of a word -- see my blog on phonemes). Many of the vowels and consonants found in Chinese (including sounds that are difficult for foreign learners) are not found in Japanese. However, as I said, similarity of differences in sounds are the least valuable clue about the language relationships. Indeed, if sound systems were the criteria, then we might think that Japanese was related to Italian or Indonesian. But it is not.The second criterion is vocabulary. Between two languages that are distantly related, when you compare lists of the most simple everyday words in both languages, parallels will begin to emerge. For example, are the French and Spanish words for "school," "ecole" and "escuela," related? We find out by comparing other pairs of words -- for example, "ecouter" and "escuchar," both meaning "to listen" -- to see if similar patterns emerge. Languages always borrow words from other languages as different people come into contact with each other. Sometimes there are conquests and some languages are subjugated and then the influence of the conquering language is heavy. The majority of words in the English dictionary may be borrowed from Latin or Greek -- like "aquarium" and "hydrology," both with roots meaning "water" -- but the everyday word "water" reveals the original roots of English. Japanese vocabulary contains many Chinese borrowings, but, like the Latin words in English, these words tend to be the academic, literary vocabulary, not everyday words. So let's look at some everyday words in Japanese and see what similarities are there or not.where = dokuwhat = nanihow = ikagawhen = itsubig = ookiismall = chiisaibird = toridog = inu egg = tamagohead = atamafoot = ashito eat = taberuto drink = nomuto sleep = neruto live = ikiruto laugh = warauNo parallels with Chinese vocabulary appear at all.The third aspect is morphosyntax, also known as grammar. To begin with (and this will relate to the difference between Chinese and Japanese writing that I will deal with in Part 2) Japanese conjugates its verbs. It does not do it in the same way as Indo-European languages, though. Japanese verbs have separate positive and negative conjugations -- there are separate conjugations for the positive "to eat" and the negative "to not-eat." Japanese verbs also have polite and casual forms. So every verb is in a form either polite and positive, casual and positive, polite and negative, or casual and negative, before the suffix signifying tense: present tense, simple past, past progressive, probable, and probable progressive, and the rarely used direct command. Another suffix can be added to signify the passive voice ("to be eaten") or causative ("to cause to eat").Japanese also conjugates adjectives like verbs. To say "The apple is red" you would use a verb "to be red" which takes verb endings.Japanese also uses particles that signify the function of nouns in the sentence. The grammatical subject is followed by "ga" and the direct object of the sentence is followed by "o," but most important is the topic marker, which is followed by "wa." The topic marker tells what the real topic or focus of the sentence is, which may not be the grammatical subject. So now we get to the fun part -- Japanese syntax (word order).Here are some sentences taken from a textbook, with literal word for word translations. I will use "subj," "obj," and "top" for the subject, object, and topic markers respectively.My name is Matsushima.Boku no namae wa Matsushima desu.I of name top Matsushima is.Because he is American, he does not speak Japanese.Kare wa amerika-jin desu kara nihongo o hanashimasen.He top America-man is because Japanese obj does-not-speak.As I went along the road, I met him.Sono michi o yuku to kare ni atta.That road obj go when him in-order-to met.He usually returns around five o'clock.Kare no kaeru no wa futsuu go-ji goro desu.He subj return fact top usually five-o'clock around is.When he left, he said goodbye.Kaeru toki kare wa sayoonara so iimashita.Leave when he top goodbye thus said.He worked in order to go to school.Kare wa gakkoo ni iku tame ni hatakimashita.He top school to go purpose to worked.I returned because I had something to do.Watakishi wa shigoto ga atta no de kaerimashita.I top job subj was because of returned.We went to see a movie. Eiga o mi ni ikimashita.Movie obj see to went.Which are cheaper, apples or plums?Ringo to ume to wa, dochita no hoo ga yasui desu ka?Apple with plum with top which of direction subj cheap qu? Ha-ha, Japanese can sound so very funny when translated word for word into English.So Japanese is obviously totally different from Chinese. But then why does Japanese writing contain Chinese characters, if the two languages are not related? And what are the unintelligible squiggles that surround the Chinese characters in Japanese writing?I will discuss these question in Part 2, The Japanese Writing System.

If you don't know the English word "scam," the computer dictionary translates it as 诈骗. "Scammer" is 骗子. Scammers have hit China Daily. I received the following message today. Checking the sender's profile, I see that he/she sent it to many other people. So I decided to blog about it. This is a scam to get money and also personal information for future scams. I am sure that the moderators will remove the scammer and maybe delete the private messages if they can, but I think it would be good to leave up this blog for educational purposes because this type of scam is common on the internet (although maybe only in English).The message is as follows:My Dear Friend God blessed you Calvary Greetings in the name of Almighty God, I want to tell you this because I don’t have any other option than to contact you after going through your profile as i was touched to open up to you. I am Mrs Maria Eze, A widow to Late Dr.Harry Eze (former Counselor of the Benin Embassy in Madrid, Spain. We own Treasure Art Inc and Treasure Crude Oil Marketers; we are very wealthy we have a lot of properties including Shares and houses. I am 69 years old a new Christian convert. I am suffering from cancer of the Pelvic my condition is serious; according to my doctor it is quite obvious that I may not survive the sickness. My late husband and my only son died in the crash of Swiss air Flight 111 on the 2, of September 1998. After the death of my husband I made up my mind to do the work of God as a missionary. I sold all my husband's properties and shares to enable me raise some money to continue my mission. I raised the sum of US$11.5M(Eleven Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) which I deposited with a Bank here. Now that my sickness has gone to this stage, I am scared and I want the fund to be used for the work of God all over the world. I have prayed to God to direct me to an honest PERSON who will receive this fund and utilize it for things that will glorify the name of God, after my prayers, I searched your site in the Internet, I found your email address and I decided to contact you to receive the fund. This is on the condition that you will take only 40% of the fund for yourself, 5% for any expenses, while you will use the remaining 55% for the less privileges people in the society. If you are interested in using this fund for the work of God, please send to me your full name, address, telephone/fax number, occupation and age to enable me give it to the Bank for immediate arrangement to release the fund to you.I will also give you a text of the application Letter which you are going to fill up and send to the bank. I can not predict what will be my fate by the time the fund will be transferred into your account, but you should please ensure that the fund is used as I have described above. I await your urgent reply to my private Email: (deleted) Most sincerely, Mrs. Maria Eeze.

THE PANDA'S AMERICAN COUSINDid you know that the panda is not a bear but a raccoon? Or, more correctly, a member of the raccoon family? Well, what does that mean -- what is a raccoon? The raccoon is an animal familiar throughout North America. Unlike the rare and endangered panda, though, the raccoon is a very common animal. They lurk by night, even in the cities, and are frequently encountered. They are remarkable and interesting animals. So I will tell you about the Chinese panda's smaller American cousin.As mentioned before, raccoons live even in cities, as long as there are wild spots where they can hide. While other forest animals have declined or died out when forests are cut down, raccoons have survived and adapted to humans. Raccoons have survived so well in the human world for several reasons. They are very smart. They are curious. They are omnivorous, eating almost anything edible. They have fully working hands, and, like monkeys, they are very clever at using their hands. Although they are not aggressive, they are very capable of defending themselves and can kill a dog that attacks them. Raccoons have one other characteristic that has helped their survival: they are EXTREMELY CUTE. Although raccoons can cause trouble for people, it is hard for anyone to hate raccoons, even when they raid the garbage cans or kill the chickens. They are just so cute!Sometimes people intentionally leave out food for raccoons so that they can watch the cute raccoons when they come at night for the food. This is a mistake. If a raccoon associates your house with food, and you forget to leave out the food for them some night, they may break into your house to look for food. And then, watch out. They have hands and can open things, and they can climb anywhere. People who teach raccoons to think of their house as a place for food have discovered their kitchens completely trashed.But raccoons are so cute, who can be mad at them?Raccoons are nocturnal, traveling around at night in family groups looking for food. They make a lot of noise sometimes, so you know when they are around. A fun thing to do is to shine a flashlight around when you hear raccoons. If you hit a raccoon's eyes with the flashlight beam, their eyes will glow like car headlights in the darkness, and they can't seem to look away from the beam, so then you can see those two mysterious glowing white eyes in shining in the blackness, a neat effect!Although it is illegal, people sometimes adopt baby raccoons as pets. Who can resist raccoons, after all? Raccoons are so cute. They are also very clean animals. Surely the perfect house pet? But raccoons are also very smart and curious and will open every cupboard in the house and get into everything. People who keep raccoons as house pets soon come to regret it. But raccoons are so cute, who wouldn't want one as a pet?I saw a documentary recently about raccoons in Japan. No, they are not native to Japan. According to the documentary, someone made a movie from a book about a boy who had a pet raccoon named Rascal, and that movie became popular in Japan. So Japanese people fell in love with raccoons (they are so cute, and the Japanese people seem to be the world's greatest lovers of cuteness). So then Japanese people started getting raccoons as pets. Unfortunately, they soon learned this was a mistake. They wanted to get rid of the pet raccoons, but what to do with it? Well, in the book and movie "Rascal," the boy eventually let his raccoon loose in the wild. So the Japanese people let their raccoons loose. But there was no wild for the raccoons to go to. So the wild raccoons have started living under people's houses and in attics, and damaging the house. People have raccoon pee fall on their heads from the ceiling because of the raccoons living in their attics.But still, raccoons are so cute. According to the documentary, there are proposals to exterminate these Japanese raccoons, but the people can't stand to exterminate something so cute.I love seeing raccoons. They are so cute. Just like their cute cousin the panda.

As a teacher and educator and linguist (having a degree in Linguistics, the science of language) I have long been interested in how the brain learns, and especially how the brain learns language. Of course, one can learn a lot about this subject by observing one's own learning and thinking processes.Many years ago, in college, I took one year of Chinese. Although the Chinese I learned was limited, it gave me the opportunity to experience how differently the brain processes ideographic and phonetic writing.In my college Chinese classes, we had separate classes for conversation and for writing.I loved Chinese characters and I still do. I loved to practice writing them and was several lessons ahead in character class. (We studied both traditional and simplified characters.) I loved reading them, I loved going through Chinatown and looking for characters I recognized and proclaiming, "That says Golden Dragon Restaurant!" and asking for the Chinese menu in the restaurant and seeing how many characters I could recognize (beef, pork, etc). I loved reading the Dao De Jing and Mao's Red Book (amazing that the latter is easy enough to read, once you can recognize phrases like "feudalism" and "imperialism" and so on, that a first year Chinese student can read it). Oh yes, and part of learning each character was learning its pronunciation, complete with the correct tone, and I learned that, and could read the simple character texts aloud with acceptable pronunciation.But a few years went by, and I began to forget what I had learned in class. And what I observed was interesting, a clue about the workings of the brain.What I forgot most quickly was the pronunciation of the characters. But the meanings of the characters stayed with me for a long time. After a few years, I picked up my character textbook and could understand what most of it meant, but with most of the characters, I forgot their pronunciation. I could read the texts aloud in English, but not in Chinese.This was a big clue for me about how the brain works differently when processing phonetic writing and ideographic writing. Since I am a teacher, and part of my teaching has involved teaching children to read (in English) I am interested in the way the brain processes reading.Reading and writing both involve: meaning, sound, and written symbols.But these are processed in a different order with ideographic writing and phonetic writing.For example, an English-speaking child is learning to read the word "fish." The child first learns the sounds of f, i, and sh and then puts the sounds together and pronounces the word: "fish." The child's brain recognizes the sound of the word "fish." The sound in turn triggers the memory of the meaning of "fish" in the child's brain.In reading phonetic writing, then, the brain follows this order: written symbol, sound, meaning.If some other language had a word pronounced "fish" but with a different meaning, the speakers of that language would read "fish" with their meaning. So the meaning of "fish" is not contained in the written symbol. It requires the memory of someone whose brain connects the sound of "fish" with its meaning.But for Chinese-speaking child learning to read the word 鱼,the meaning of "fish" comes first. Working from the meaning, the child's brain retrieves the memory of how to pronounce it (whether the Mandarin or Cantonese or other pronunciation). The child could even be like me and say "fish" in English upon seeing 鱼. The pronunciation does not really matter because the meaning is contained in the written symbol.So reading phonetic writing puts pronunciation before meaning, while reading ideographs puts meaning before pronunciation. In other words, reading phonetic writing is more like listening to another person speak (the sounds of their speech are translated into meaning in your mind), while reading ideographic writing is more akin to forming thoughts within your own head (the thoughts or feelings come first, and the brain converts those thoughts into sound).This means that the two writing systems create very distinct neural pathways in the brain.It is well known to brain scientists that bilingualism has enormous benefits to brain development, because it creates more different neural pathways. But bilingualism (and biliteracy) in a phonetic language and an ideographic language would surely have even vaster benefits to the brain. Indeed, I have heard more than one bilingual Chinese person say that their thought processes go in different ways when they are thinking in Chinese or English. That means that they have much more flexibility and ability to think of things from different angles. Being able to think well from multiple different angles will be an important ability in the globalized world.Someone posted here that if Chinese people could combine their traditional knowledge with the mastery of western ways, they would be supermen. I think that one reason for that is the unique brain strength of combining bilingualism in a language like Chinese and a language like English.

This blog is for people whose aim is to speak and converse orally in English. When I teach immigrants to the USA to speak English, oral conversation is their most important priority. That is also the most natural way to learn a language, it is how babies learn. But most Chinese will probably have little occasion in their lives to converse with an English speaker, so their priorities and reasons for learning English will be different -- the most important priority would be to read English, since the ability to read English opens the door to vast information. In order to read, it is not necessary to worry much about pronunciation.However, some Chinese people will want or need to learn to converse orally. Then pronunciation becomes an issue. In order to learn pronunciation in a foreign language, it is necessary to understand the phonemes of the target language. "Phoneme" refers to what speakers of a particular language hear as one sound. "Phonemic boundaries" can be wide or narrow with regard to different sounds. For example, English speakers (until taught differently) will hear the initial sounds of "qi" and "chi" as the same sound. This is because in English, they are the one phoneme. A Spanish speaker will hear the vowel sound in "fit" and "feet" is one phoneme, because in Spanish those sounds are one phoneme. In English, on the other hand, they are two phonemes. That doesn't mean that a Spanish speaker may not hear the sounds as different; it means that, in Spanish, those differences only mark different accents, they don't change the meaning of the word. But if two sounds are considered to be different phonemes in a language, changing them means changing the meaning of a word. In Chinese, tones are "phonemic" -- that means that changing the tone changes the meaning.The difference between speaking intelligibly in a foreign language, even though with a foreign accent, and being unintelligible or misunderstood, has to do with how your pronunciation fits in with the phonemes of the target language. For example, Spanish and English pronounce "r" very differently, but both of them have wide phonemic boundaries for this sound; despite the very different pronunciation, both languages recognize both pronunciations as being a form of "r." That means that if a Spanish speaker pronounces "horse" with a Spanish r, it will have a huge foreign accent, but an English speaker will still understand the word. Similarly, if an American English speaker pronounces a Spanish word like ""roder" with an American English r, it will be understood by Spanish speakers, even though it will sound like an atrocious gringo accent.No two languages, or even dialects of the same language, have precisely the same phonetic system, even if sometimes the differences are very subtle. Different languages, for example, may pronounce "t" with the tongue placed in a slightly different way. Substituting the sounds of your native language for the similar (but not identical) sounds of the target language is what creates foreign accent. A good example of this is the fact that the sounds represented in pinyin by b, d, and g are not the same as the sounds represented in English. English speakers use the vocal cords when pronouncing these sounds, whereas Chinese speakers do not. Nevertheless, the English "d" and Chinese (pinyin) "d" are a single phoneme in both languages. So an English speaker can substitute an English "d" when pronouncing a word like "dao," and it will be understood by a Chinese, but it will sound like a foreign accent, not like a native Chinese.But sometimes a target language may contain sounds that -- rather than being subtly similar to the phonemes of your language -- are outside of the phonemic system of your own language completely. Then, instead of substituting a similar sound from your own language, the learner may substitute a sound that is grossly different. And the learner will say that that is a hard sound to pronounce. For example, in my Chinese class in college, most students found the Chinese "r" as in "ren" difficult to pronounce because there is no sound in English that uses the tongue that way. Many English-language learners consider unvoiced "th" to be a difficult sound because that sound is found in few other languages. In reality, there are no sounds that are harder than others to pronounce; a babbling infant can easily make all sounds of all languages. But as we grow up, the neuron paths of our brains are "pruned" to the sounds of our own language and we grow to consider other sounds difficult to pronounce.The point of all this is that it is not necessary for a language learner to have perfect pronunciation in order to be understood in the target language. Some sounds are more important than others when it comes to being understood by a native speaker. Even if you don't get much chance to orally converse with real live English speakers, for those who use American TV shows and movies to improve their understanding, understanding the sound system of English can help with comprehension.

Often people here post the question, "How can I improve my English?"I am an American who has taught TESOL and also who has had the experience of learning several languages as an adult, so I speak from the perspective of both language teacher and language learner. I have decided to start a blog on the subject of improving English.The question "How can I improve my English?" is not specific enough. Improving your speaking, improving your listening comprehension, improving your reading, or improving your writing.The easiest skill to improve is reading. You can learn to read to comprehend without knowing how to pronounce the words well. I can read and understand French but I can neither speak French nor understand the spoken language. I have met many people in Latin American countries who could do the same with English, they could read research papers but not pronounce the English. And, long after I studied Chinese, I could still understand many characters and read simple sentences even if I couldn't remember how they were pronounced. Even if you can never converse with an English-speaking person, the ability to access and understand English-language information is invaluable.So, reading is the easiest skill to acquire, and the best way to improve reading comprehension in English is simple practice. The hardest skill to acquire in a foreign language is the ability to write. It is very difficult to master perfectly. Mistakes are more noticeable in the written language than in conversation. Even if the meaning is clear, it will sound like it is written by a foreigner because the grammar mistakes made by a foreigner and those made by a native speaker are not the same. There are many subtleties in the grammar and syntax of any language that cannot be learned by memorizing rules. If you need something written in perfect English, best to hire someone to perfect it for you. But for informal communication things don't need to be perfect, and the heart shines through.If the question about improving spoken English, then that depends on practice. My TESOL students in the USA,of course, have no trouble finding English-speakers to practice with. My job is to help them to overcome their shyness and encourage them to take advantage of every opportunity to practice. Unfortunately, students in China would have little opportunity to talk to English speakers, therefore they seldom get the chance to practice speaking English. Nevertheless, since so much of my own TESOL experience involves helping students with speaking skills, I will offer advice in this blog as though everyone had English-speakers to practice with.The last skill is understanding the spoken language. Here, television and movies in English with Chinese subtitles may help, but be careful, the English used in movies may be extremely informal. Best to choose shows whose characters are educated people. Also, be aware that accents among English-speakers vary enormously -- how do they even understand each other? A question I hope to treat in another blog. But of these four skills -- reading, writing, speaking and listening -- in the modern internet world, reading English is undoubtedly most essential. Fortunately, it is also the easiest skill to acquire, if you don't care about how the words are pronounced but only about their meaning.