Scott Tyler's Blog

 Well, my Chinese is progressing painfully slowly, but I plan to study intensively (although part-time) for the next two years.

The thing is, if I plan to do further study (for a master's degree in either international relations or asian studies), then I really ought to study a third language.  But which one?  The four I'm leaning towards are (in order of easiest to hardest):

1. French: relatively easy to learn, and it would be useful if I choose to work for the federal government at some future time. However, it's not an Asian language, so it would not help me if I chose a course in Asian studies.  Also, it would be nearly impossible to get a competent tutor here in China.

2. Russian: difficult, but still easier than Korean or Japanese.  It's also not an Asian language, but it's important to international relations, especially in the last century.  It would be difficult, though not impossible, to get a tutor.

3. Korean: the easiest of the East Asian languages, I already know how to read it.  Plus, it would be a piece of cake to get a tutor, as I'm teaching next year in Dalian Korean International School.  On the other hand, it's not as international a language as French, Russian or even Japanese.

4. Japanese: I'm intrigued by Japanese, and it would be useful if I plan to go into Asian studies.  It would be difficult, though not impossible to get a tutor.  But it is one of the hardest languages to learn, and I think, as a third language, it might be too much for me.

So, friends and family (and random strangers): any advice?  Which should I choose?

I wonder if anyone has done this: tried to learn 10 words/phrases, plus the numbers 1-10, in one language/week, for one year? That would be 52 languages, plus the ones you already speak.

Wouldn't it be great if you could meet someone from almost any country in Europe or Asia and be able to say "Hello, how are you?" in their own language?

I would suggest learning the equivalent of these English words or phrases:

hello
goodbye
how are you?
I'm fine.
please
thank you
sorry
yes
no
my name is...

(and numbers 1-10)

A list of the 52 most widely spoken languages in the world may be found at www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html But I would recommend the following list (in italics are the ones I already know the basic vocabulary for).  I also assume anyone reading this doesn't need to learn 'hello' in English.  Most of these languages are 'national' languages: the official language of a country.  All are spoken by over 1 million people (which is why Icelandic, Gaelic and Maltese were left out).

Europe (24)

Asia (25)

Turkish, Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbi, Hebrew, Farsi (Persian/Iranian), Hindi, Bengali, Singhalese, Kazakh or Uzbek, Burman, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese, Malay, Bahasa Indonesian, Filipino, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese.

Other (3)

Swahili, Yoruba, Mayan

Of course, there are 6,000 to 12,000 languages in the world, but that would take 115-230 years to learn these phrases in those language. And yes, I know someone will say: "Wouldn't it be better to just learn one language really well? I think this exercise is very superficial!" To which I reply: bite me.

My dear friend, Xiao Jie, has translated a few of my poems into Chinese. Another Chinese friend, Eddie, read the poems and says she did a marvelous job in translating them. (I never doubted it.) Thank you so much, XJ!

Please click on the links below to see them.

MyChinesepoems2.doc

Diplomats have long discussed a 'two-state solution' for Israel and Palestine.  But because of Hamas, negotiations have recently gone nowhere, and the situation, far from improving, seems to be deteriorating.  Hamas has almost complete control of Gaza, and it is from there that they have launched attacks on Israel.  But the West Bank, where the majority of Palestinians live (excluding those in the diaspora) is largely controlled by Fatah, which has recognized Israel's right to exist, and wants to move ahead with the two-state solution.

So perhaps Israel, and other Western countries, should treat Gaza and the West Bank as seperate entities, unfreezing aid to the West Bank, while continuing to pressure Gaza.  In return, authorities in the West Bank would have to agree to ignore limited Israeli actions against Gaza, such as retaliating for Hamas rocket strikes, and prevent any terrorist attacks from the West Bank.  If Hamas acts more reasonably in the future, or if they lose control of Gaza, the two areas (Gaza and the West Bank) could be treated as one again.  But for now, it might be more constructive for Israel and West Bank Palestinians to accept a temporary 'three state solution'.

With all the trouble in Western China, and China's continuing trade with the genocidal Sudanese government, there will probably be a lot of people in the West calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.  That would be a mistake.  The problem is that, while the Chinese government may deserve an Olympic boycott, the Chinese people will never understand it.  There is no real freedom of the press in China, and all that the Chinese people know about what is happening in W. China is what their government is telling them: that a certain minority are rioting for no reason, burning Han Chinese shops, and attacking the police, who are just there to 'protect' them.  And the Chinese believe it.  They believe it, because they have no other source of information- YouTube (which has been showing certain videos) and many news websites have been blocked in China. 

For Chinese, hosting the Olympics this year is a source of great national pride.  If other countries boycott the Olympics it will only confirm what many Chinese have long believed: that foreigners are always picking on 'poor China'.  This belief, which is deeply held by many Chinese, stems in part from recent history- when Europeans and Japanese took advantage of China's weakness, from the Opium Wars to World War II.  Chinese have long memories.  Their xenophobia [fear of foreigners] is also the result of their lack of knowledge of the world outside of China, and the false history (obscuring atrocities committed by Chinese against Chinese, and against minorities in China) which is taught in Chinese schools.  If the Chinese knew their own history they would fear their own government more than any foreign country.  (As terrible as the Nanjing massacre was, far more Chinese were killed in a single month of the Cultural Revolution.)

Boycotting the Olympics will not change the government of China's attitude towards minorities.  But it will fuel xenophobic, nationalist sentiment in China: which is exactly what the world does not want in an emerging superpower.