The Future Doesn't Speak French

[kimpossible]

By William Lee Adams
Newsweek

May 9 issue - At Dulles High School in Sugar Land, Texas, the roster for Advanced Chinese V begins with Jason Chao and ends with Kathy Zhang. In between comes an unexpected name: Elizabeth Hoffman. Hoffman, now a 12th grader, began studying Chinese in the eighth grade, has spent a summer studying in Nanjing and plans to perfect her Mandarin when she starts college next fall. When asked by her peers—who typically take Spanish—why she is learning Chinese, she responds with a question: "Why aren't you?"

As China rushes toward superpower status, America's schools and government officials are echoing Hoffman's sentiment. Earlier this year Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey introduced legislation calling for increased funding of programs for less commonly taught languages. "For reasons of economics, culture and security we should have much better facility with Chinese languages and dialects," he says. The State Department has designated Chinese a "critical language," but the most recent data show that only 24,000 students in grades 7 to 12 study Chinese, a language spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide. (More than 1 million students learn French, a language spoken by 75 million people.)

Still, the number is growing. In Chicago public schools, enrollment in Chinese classes has skyrocketed from 500 students in 1999 to nearly 3,500 students this year—and most of these students are Caucasian, African-American or Hispanic. In the Santa Clara County, Calif., district, enrollment has quadrupled during the same period. In 2007, when the College Board debuts advanced-placement language exams in Chinese and Italian, 2,400 high schools plan to offer AP Chinese—10 times the number that plan to offer AP Italian.

Much of the interest can be explained by China's increasing competitiveness. "People are always trying to gauge what languages are going to be useful for the future," says Marty Abbot, director of education at the National Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. After the sputnik launch in 1957, and after the rise of Japan's economy in the late ' 80s, funding for Russian and Japanese language programs grew dramatically—as did enrollment. Stephanie Wong, a student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif., chose Chinese so that she could speak with her grandfather. (In U.S. homes, Chinese has eclipsed French, German and Italian to become the third most commonly spoken language, after English and Spanish.) Wong also predicts that Chinese will be important if she becomes a doctor, as she hopes: her hometown is nearly 80 percent Asian.

Even elementary-school parents have caught on. "My children will have a distinct advantage if I can keep them interested in Chinese," says Julie Dobson, who enrolled her two children—Elliot, 8, and Lindsey, 9—in a dual-immersion program in Chinese instead of Spanish. At her children's school, Potomac Elementary in Potomac, Md., 30 percent of students receive math and science instruction in Chinese starting in kindergarten.

The next challenge: finding enough teachers to meet the growing demand. Certification requirements—such as tests of English proficiency and American pedagogy—can prevent native Chinese speakers from gaining certification. And teachers often must create their own textbooks and curriculum. "We all have to be pioneers and develop the program," says teacher Sarah Ting of Dulles High School. In spite of these difficulties—and the fact that her school is 300 miles from Mexico—Ting keeps trying. She began with 50 students in 1998 and today has nearly 200. That's progress, no matter which language you speak.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

[yoMAMA]

interesting.

chinese is obviously more difficult to learn than other european languages....[spanish? :wink:

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Earlier this year Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey introduced legislation calling for increased funding of programs for less commonly taught languages. "For reasons of economics, culture and security we should have much better facility with Chinese languages and dialects," he says.
More recently, there's the Alexander bill:
http://alexander.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_Id=731
May 26th, 2005 - WASHINGTON – With the United States at the threshold of a new era in foreign policy, with the People’s Republic of China emerging as a major economic and military superpower, U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have introduced the United States-China Cultural Engagement Act as a step to improve relations between the two nations.

“Senator Alexander and I are convinced that this investment will have big payoffs by smoothing the exchange of commerce and culture between our great nations and reducing misunderstandings into the future,” Lieberman said. “The rise of China comes with a whole set of challenges. But the ability to talk to and understand each other should not be among them. Providing our children with the opportunity to understand the Chinese language and culture will help ensure they have a better chance of succeeding in the global economy.”

"There will be challenges in the United States’ relationship with China as it grows and we seek to maintain our position in the world and our standard of living," said Alexander during a news conference on Capitol Hill. "But it’s my hope that the United States will spend some of our time and money getting to know China better, and that Chinese citizens will spend time getting to know us. History has shown that the modest dollars we’ve spent on education programs have done far more good than hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. We can argue, we can send diplomats, we can build up our defenses, we can assert our position, we can spend money on foreign aid, but we all know there’s only one thing that’s worked best and that is when we get to know each other better. I appreciate Senator Lieberman’s leadership and am delighted to join him in this important and far-seeing undertaking."

The legislation authorizes $1.3 billion in federal funds over five years to provide for Chinese language instruction in American schools, increase American consular activity supporting American commercial activity in China and provide for physical and virtual exchanges among a broad spectrum of individuals in the two nations.


The State Department has designated Chinese a "critical language," but the most recent data show that only 24,000 students in grades 7 to 12 study Chinese, a language spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide. (More than 1 million students learn French, a language spoken by 75 million people.)
Well the basic problem is that no one is going to learn any foreign language, let alone Chinese, from a high school course. Hell, it took me 8 years of Spanish classes before I could follow some trashy telenovela aimed at the dumber half of the Mexican population, understand the commentary for La Copa Mundial (cuz we were too cheap to get cable just to get world cup coverage in English), or write a decent essay. And I'm not exactly a retard when it comes to foreign languages, if you'll excuse my immodesty. The only way the average kid (as opposed to the highly motivated ones enrolling in the courses on their own with parental support to go off on study abroad to Nanjing) is going to get to a decent level of Chinese is through a dual-immersion program, or at the very least studying the foreign language as a subject starting somewhere around the 1st grade ...

I also wonder if white/black kids graduating these programs aren't gonna go around trying to speak Chinese to every Chinese person they see, stepping on lots of toes in the process. Hell, I've had people in HK get pissed at me for speaking in Chinese to them, even though they're obviously not native speakers of English and would be better off talking in Chinese. What kind of reaction would you get from ABCs or rich immigrants inordinately proud of their English abilities?

It seems like a much cheaper solution to the foreign language skillset problem would just be to admit more Chinese immigrants and let them pick up English ... that's how America's always done it in the past, anyway, and that's why there's such an enormous disincentive to studying foreign languages here (contra those pundits who think Americans are really gonna learn foreign languages to communicate with immigrants, or are gonna get any opportunity to practice with those immigrants once they do).

[stupidredhead13]

The next challenge: finding enough teachers to meet the growing demand. Certification requirements—such as tests of English proficiency and American pedagogy—can prevent native Chinese speakers from gaining certification.

I'm surprised they thought it would be an issue. My sixth grade teacher had a hard time finding an area of a triangle and my high school Environmental Science teacher could barely form a gramatically correct sentence over 5 words in length. By the way, it was an AP class and English was his native language.

Seems they could pick random bums off the street and they would have no problem gaining certification.

If anything would prevent native Chinese speakers from becoming teachers, it would be the miserably low salaries, and not inability to pass an English proficiency exam.

[deez nuts]

french has been utterly useless to me so far.

[BeTheReds]

The distant distant future speaks French once Africa is industrialized.

[asvenus]

i knew there was a reason i bunked off french classes...heehee...
seriously though i wish i had formally (ie within the education sytem) had the opportunity to study an alternative language to what we had...spanish/french/german

[yoMAMA]

The distant distant future speaks French once Africa is industrialized.

then shouldn't we learn languages like swahili?

[focusonit]

With a population of well over 1 billion and annual GDP growth rate at over 10 percent, without question it would be wise to study Chinese. Those in Asia should focus on learning English as well, which seems to be what is happening based on the demand for English teachers.

[Sebro]

Chinese is becoming a much more 'visible' language outside of China. I worked in Quzhou, Zhejiang, PRC, for 6 months where I picked up some of the language and on my return home to Melbourne I was surprised how often I heard Mandarin, especially at uni. I read somewhere that if you can speak Mandarin and English you can speak to 3 out of every 5 people of the planet, which is something I don't doubt.

I never had the chance to learn Mandarin through school, Indonesian was offered at both my primary and secondary schools and French is still offered at many Australian high schools.

Whilst I am learning Mandarin now on my own time, I'm not learning because of China's growing importance on the world stage, I'm learning because, as odd asa it may sound, I like learning other languages.

French is still important though, as it is still the offical diplomatic language. Ever noticed how you've French in your passport?

[grimfan]

I was over at another board, when I was reading through a thread about the most important languages taught at school. The regulars came up, like German, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and French. Then, a couple of Euronazi types post a couple of messages about how only the European languages are important because Asian languages (namely Mandarin) are confined solely to that unimportant continent, while Euro languages are critical mainly because Europeans speak it. They speak of the "global reach" of French, which I believe consists of France, Quebec, some parts of the Carribean, and North Africa. Yeah, buddy, that's more important than a country of over a billion people. One person even waived off Mandarin's importance because it's only spoken by a billion poor rice farmers (I think it's kind of hard to grow rice in Beijing and Shanghai).

That got me thinking about how Americans (or non-Asians in America) would accept an Asian language as a secondary, or more realistically as a tertiary language (I doubt Chinese-Americans will outnumber Hispanic-Americans anytime soon).

Firstly, there's a clear contempt for Asian languages: they look alien, they sound cacophonous to western ears, and they are very difficult to learn in general (although I heard that Korean is really easy). I know that not all languages are equal on the pleasantry scale (for example, many people I know find German to be really funny-sounding and rather horrendous, and these are non-Asian people), but I think the disdain for Asian languages is in another sphere. You'd never really see a person going up to a bunch of kids speaking Swedish or something demanding, "Speak English instead of [mock Swedish]!" If anything, he or she'd be more inclined to be impressed. But when's the last time anybody was impressed by somebody's ability to speak an Asian language? Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, etc. are all treated, in general, like gibberish tribalspeak that need to be stamped out instead of embraced.

Secondly, Asian languages are dramatically different from the Latin-based languages of Europe. German, Spanish, French, and Italian all use the same alphabet, more or less, as English, but Mandarin is like another universe. It'd require much more work and commitment to learn, and most people are just plain lazy.

This is a digression, but I still want to rant some more. I wouldn't exactly say there's a lot of racism against Asians, where cops routinely falsely arrest Asians, beat them, jail them, etc. Asians are not denied service because of their race, and Asians do not have militantly hostile organizations against them. However, Asians do have prejudice against them, and I believe there are two forms of this prejudice: American and European. American prejudice comes in the form of Long Duck Dong, penis jokes, nerdlinger stereotypes, etc. European prejudice is brainier and more anthropological, in that it compares the historical achievements of whites vs. Asians. While American prejudice is merely annoying, I find European prejudice to be more harmful and personally infuriating. I mean, could you ever invision a Hitler rising to power by utilizing the comparison of male appendage sizes? Aryans are "bigger" than Jews? In history, most kids at high school are taught an extremely Eurocentric point of view, as cliched as that sounds. All the important wars, discoveries, artists, etc. are European. Sure, some footnotes are dedicated to a sprinkle of important Chinese, Arabs, and Indians, but nothing in detail. This may lead young people to believe that the only place that matters is Europe, and by natural extension, North America. Places like Africa and Asia are just "other worlds" that are simply complementary to the dominant European/American stronghold. Thus, despite a billion-plus Mandarin speakers, a few hundred million German speakers deem the latter language more important than the former because they're in "our world". Bullshit, all of it. Fight it.

PS Some may argue that since, say, Canada is largely a "white" nation, its curriculum should revolve around "white" history. However, Canada also proudly proclaims itself as a multicultural nation, as a mosaic of different cultures. By doing so, it has an obligation to represent all cultures equally and fairly.

[nola]

Yeah welcome to Yellowworld!

Mandarin not only will be the most important language to know, people will want to live in China or Asia because of its booming economies.

[returntosender]

In history, most kids at high school are taught an extremely Eurocentric point of view, as cliched as that sounds. All the important wars, discoveries, artists, etc. are European. Sure, some footnotes are dedicated to a sprinkle of important Chinese, Arabs, and Indians, but nothing in detail. This may lead young people to believe that the only place that matters is Europe, and by natural extension, North America. Places like Africa and Asia are just "other worlds" that are simply complementary to the dominant European/American stronghold.


That's an interesting point. People seem to think that because their nationality is the same as that of a famous inventor or some historical figure, they should also inherit the prestige by association. To me, that's just so stupid because if you truly want to bask in the glory of someone elses achievements, then you should also have to suffer the same stigmas as your nations worst criminals.


PS Some may argue that since, say, Canada is largely a "white" nation, its curriculum should revolve around "white" history. However, Canada also proudly proclaims itself as a multicultural nation, as a mosaic of different cultures. By doing so, it has an obligation to represent all cultures equally and fairly.

Canada is doing a better job than the States, but the obvious influences from our neighbours to the south are very self-evident.

[yoMAMA]

I was over at another board, when I was reading through a thread about the most important languages taught at school. The regulars came up, like German, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and French. Then, a couple of Euronazi types post a couple of messages about how only the European languages are important because Asian languages (namely Mandarin) are confined solely to that unimportant continent, while Euro languages are critical mainly because Europeans speak it. They speak of the "global reach" of French, which I believe consists of France, Quebec, some parts of the Carribean, and North Africa. Yeah, buddy, that's more important than a country of over a billion people. One person even waived off Mandarin's importance because it's only spoken by a billion poor rice farmers (I think it's kind of hard to grow rice in Beijing and Shanghai).

That got me thinking about how Americans (or non-Asians in America) would accept an Asian language as a secondary, or more realistically as a tertiary language (I doubt Chinese-Americans will outnumber Hispanic-Americans anytime soon).

Firstly, there's a clear contempt for Asian languages: they look alien, they sound cacophonous to western ears, and they are very difficult to learn in general (although I heard that Korean is really easy). I know that not all languages are equal on the pleasantry scale (for example, many people I know find German to be really funny-sounding and rather horrendous, and these are non-Asian people), but I think the disdain for Asian languages is in another sphere. You'd never really see a person going up to a bunch of kids speaking Swedish or something demanding, "Speak English instead of [mock Swedish]!" If anything, he or she'd be more inclined to be impressed. But when's the last time anybody was impressed by somebody's ability to speak an Asian language? Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, etc. are all treated, in general, like gibberish tribalspeak that need to be stamped out instead of embraced.

Secondly, Asian languages are dramatically different from the Latin-based languages of Europe. German, Spanish, French, and Italian all use the same alphabet, more or less, as English, but Mandarin is like another universe. It'd require much more work and commitment to learn, and most people are just plain lazy.

This is a digression, but I still want to rant some more. I wouldn't exactly say there's a lot of racism against Asians, where cops routinely falsely arrest Asians, beat them, jail them, etc. Asians are not denied service because of their race, and Asians do not have militantly hostile organizations against them. However, Asians do have prejudice against them, and I believe there are two forms of this prejudice: American and European. American prejudice comes in the form of Long Duck Dong, penis jokes, nerdlinger stereotypes, etc. European prejudice is brainier and more anthropological, in that it compares the historical achievements of whites vs. Asians. While American prejudice is merely annoying, I find European prejudice to be more harmful and personally infuriating. I mean, could you ever invision a Hitler rising to power by utilizing the comparison of male appendage sizes? Aryans are "bigger" than Jews? In history, most kids at high school are taught an extremely Eurocentric point of view, as cliched as that sounds. All the important wars, discoveries, artists, etc. are European. Sure, some footnotes are dedicated to a sprinkle of important Chinese, Arabs, and Indians, but nothing in detail. This may lead young people to believe that the only place that matters is Europe, and by natural extension, North America. Places like Africa and Asia are just "other worlds" that are simply complementary to the dominant European/American stronghold. Thus, despite a billion-plus Mandarin speakers, a few hundred million German speakers deem the latter language more important than the former because they're in "our world". Bullshit, all of it. Fight it.

PS Some may argue that since, say, Canada is largely a "white" nation, its curriculum should revolve around "white" history. However, Canada also proudly proclaims itself as a multicultural nation, as a mosaic of different cultures. By doing so, it has an obligation to represent all cultures equally and fairly.


good points.

[danngo]

It felt weird in college, when I took Elementary Chinese I got a C in the class :frown: and everyone thought I would get an A because I was Chinese.

But anyways, the article is interesting. I personally would've thought Spanish would be more important in the US since domestically, Hispanics are one of the largest minorities.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

It felt weird in college, when I took Elementary Chinese I got a C in the class :frown: and everyone thought I would get an A because I was Chinese.

But anyways, the article is interesting. I personally would've thought Spanish would be more important in the US since domestically, Hispanics are one of the largest minorities.
Generally, in the era of modern nationalism, people in any country haven't shown much enthusiasm for learning foreign languages to communicate with domestic immigrant minorities. Even if they're richer than the majority. And especially not if they're poorer.

For example, in Malaysia, up until recently, Japanese was the most popular foreign language, despite the fact that 1/4 to 1/3 of the population were native speakers of Chinese. The government's "Look East" policy was explicitly focused on following the Japanese model of industrialization. That changed not because of a shift in the majority's attitude towards the Chinese minority, or because of the 10,000 Japanese who came to settle in Malaysia, but because of mainland China's rise as an economic power. Now more and more Malays and Indians are attending Chinese-medium schools.

Similarly, a friend of mine in Xinjiang tells me, the Han Chinese who have come to settle there in general don't make a single effort to learn to speak Uighur, to the extent that they don't even know the names of food, but use Chinese names instead. (My friend compares this to living in South Texas all your life but never learning the word 'burrito' and always calling it a 'bean wrap' or something). Nor is Russian very popular as a foreign language there, despite their proximity to so many ex-Soviet countries whose citizens come through all the time for trading and whatnot. Just like anywhere else in China, they all wanna learn English, and don't really give a shit about other languages ... even though there are almost zero English speakers around for them to communicate with.

Also in general, especially in the US, it's VERY socially awkward to practice a foreign language with a minority who knows the national/common language. E.g. most Latinos I know don't particularly appreciate random Anglo store clerks or what not speaking to them in Spanish. (Though they seem to have a different reaction when other immigrant minorities talk to them in Spanish --- makes 'em feel kinda flattered, I guess). But anyway, the presence of a minority definitely does not make learning a foreign language that much easier for the majority. (In fact, just like you pointed out from your experience, it might make it harder --- if a minority is in a class to learn his "own" language, a lot of the time it provokes resentment from people with other mother tongues if he seems to have an advantage on them).

Another example, somewhat related: Hong Kong proportionally has far more native English speakers around than any other city in East/SE Asia (excluding Singapore, obviously). But having all those English speakers around doesn't do shit for the average HK guy's English, cuz he's not the one who gets to practice with the native speakers --- it's the social elites in multinational corporations and whatnot who get those opportunities. HK people's English sucks compared to people in Philippines, Kuala Lumpur, etc. And when you go to the countries where they have imported native-speaking English teachers by the boatload to teach people English (Taiwan, Japan, Korea), the command of the language is even worse, especially compared to the Philippines where there are no native-speaking teachers around. (In fact, a lot of Filipina maids in HK are de-facto live-in English tutors for little HK kids, who also happen to have to clean toilets and cook dinner.)

[mrcfo]

Yeah welcome to Yellowworld!

Mandarin not only will be the most important language to know, people will want to live in China or Asia because of its booming economies.

I'd doubt the average Westerner would want to move to China or any other part of Asia permanently.

The Chinese language lacks coverage and officialdom. Chinese really despite huge numbers is highly concentrated in Greater China and overseas Chinese communities.

I agree that French is becoming useless though. English is the clear winner.

[yoMAMA]

I agree that French is becoming useless though. English is the clear winner.

English is very easy to learn.

French, on the other hand, have so many rules [like musculine/femine..la/le...etc].

la toilet :tongue:

[Arex]

I wish they'd offered Chinese when I was in middle/high school. I took two years of French before I came to my senses.

It may take years of disciplined study to pick up a foreign language sufficiently so that it's of any practical use, but if you're going to half ass it, it'd might as well be something that's useful/intellectually stimulating.

RX

[TyroneK(prettypretty)]

English is very easy to learn.

French, on the other hand, have so many rules [like musculine/femine..la/le...etc].

la toilet :tongue:

Actually, it's la toilette.

French isn't so bad as long as you don't expect the grammar to make absolute sense. Once you spend substantive time learning all the irregular tenses and conjugations, you're usually okay.

Unless you're talking about le subjonctif. Not even the French are good at properly using that tense.

And most people I know think that English is actually the hardest language to learn because it's very irregular. I'm sure it's easier to get immersed in it or find practicing opportunities though due to the predominance of American and British pop culture around the world. Still, it has even less hard and fast rules regarding grammar and tense than almost any other language in the world, so many people find it difficult to speak comprehensibly.

This thread reminds me that I have to start relearning Mandarin again. Being a Chinese person who doesn't speak Chinese fluently is a lot like being a flat tire. You're useless.

[yoMAMA]

This thread reminds me that I have to start relearning Mandarin again. Being a Chinese person who doesn't speak Chinese fluently is a lot like being a flat tire. You're useless.

I though you are vietnamese?

[pikachupacabra]

This thread reminds me that I have to start relearning Mandarin again. Being a Chinese person who doesn't speak Chinese fluently is a lot like being a flat tire. You're useless.


actually, like a flat tire, you're worse than useless. definitely a drag. turn into a liability at the dim sum restaurant. All eyes turn towards you when someone asks a question in mandarin and all you can do is look at them, turn all googly eyed, stammer, and say "uh...shen me?"

[yoMAMA]

actually, like a flat tire, you're worse than useless. definitely a drag. turn into a liability at the dim sum restaurant. All eyes turn towards you when someone asks a question in mandarin and all you can do is look at them, turn all googly eyed, stammer, and say "uh...shen me?"

haha....

or as my mexican american roomate does,

"wuo bu dong".

[Napoleon Chynamite]

I studied French for 3 years and I promptly forgot everything. Learning French is a lot like learning Spanish (although with trickier pronunciation and spelling), which means I can't imagine it being that hard at all for native English speakers if the motivation to learn is there. Then again it's like, uh yeah, what's the point of learning French again? I'm currently learning how to read and write Chinese...even if I'm half-assing it I know at least it's gonna be a lot more useful.

[yoMAMA]

Then again it's like, uh yeah, what's the point of learning French again?

banging french chicks?

:wink:

[Craig]

banging french chicks?

:wink:For this task, I thought we didn't need to know French, but just needed a few pointers from Tao ...

[sinisterpanda]

french sounds so sexy though. The only reason why i would want to learn it is so that i can woo people.