Gummieshk Triglot Newbie Hong Kong inkoasis.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5843 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 17 of 34 12 February 2009 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
I'd say the language isn't the cause of illiteracy, but poverty itself. China now has
implemented compulsory primary school education so hopefully the illiteracy problem
will be alleviated.
I've read on the news though, that Chinese kids are 30% better at memorization than
the international average, because they were trained to memorize Chinese characters
from a young age. Ever wonder why the Chinese boy sitting next to you in class is
pwning you at Bio? Exactly.
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TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5895 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin
| Message 18 of 34 12 February 2009 at 11:54am | IP Logged |
Gummieshk wrote:
I've read on the news though, that Chinese kids are 30% better at memorization than the international average, because they were trained to memorize Chinese characters from a young age. Ever wonder why the Chinese boy sitting next to you in class is pwning you at Bio? Exactly. |
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I agree that poverty is the root of illiteracy. But the above statement, if true, cuts against your argument that illiteracy correlates with poverty rather than the language's difficulty. How could children reap a memory benefit from learning the language, if the language wasn't more difficult to memorize than other languages?
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6348 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes     Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 19 of 34 12 February 2009 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
Poverty is no doubt a more important reason for illiteracy, but if the ideographs weren't a barrier to literacy in themselves, why has effort been put into simplifying them? I understand that in the 1950s, going over to a Roman alphabet version for Chinese was considered by the PRC government, but the idea was shelved. Breaking with the past was one motive for the idea no doubt, but I suspect an alphabet was considered easier to teach.
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Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5975 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes   
| Message 20 of 34 12 February 2009 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
Traditional Chinese characters have been no obstacle to literacy in Taiwan.
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吕明扬 Newbie United States Joined 6132 days ago 30 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin
| Message 21 of 34 12 February 2009 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
So quick update on where im at. right now im reading 笑傲江湖 pretty interesting, its a little slow going right now, theres so much vocab in the fight scenes that I've never seen before but otherwise its not that hard.
I'm just done with textbooks, I can't stand reading them anymore so I'm just switching over to real Chinese. Newspaper articles I can usually get the gist of, depending on what they deal with.
I haven't looked at that Harry Potter book in a while, oh well. I've noticed recently my listening is no where near as good as my reading. Does anyone know of any interesting Chinese podcasts? I don't mean learning Chinese ones like ChinesePod, I usually follow the advanced ones on there with about 75% comprehension.
Oh i just looked up China's literacy rates and according to a census in 2000 its 95% men 86% women, 90% overall of people who are literate
Edited by 吕明扬 on 12 February 2009 at 7:30pm
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6348 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes     Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 22 of 34 13 February 2009 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
The last time I checked, Japan (which has an only partly ideographic writing system, part being a syllabic system) and West European societies using alphabets typically claim 99% literacy figures.
I don't know about Taiwan, but it seems to me that expressing a concept through an ideograph that can require 20 or more strokes to form is something that is going to be more difficult to teach than an alphabet.
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Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6224 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes   
| Message 23 of 34 13 February 2009 at 7:19am | IP Logged |
William Camden wrote:
The last time I checked, Japan (which has an only partly ideographic writing system, part being a syllabic system) and West European societies using alphabets typically claim 99% literacy figures.
I don't know about Taiwan, but it seems to me that expressing a concept through an ideograph that can require 20 or more strokes to form is something that is going to be more difficult to teach than an alphabet. |
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More difficult to teach, sure, depending on the method. The only people in China who are illiterate are some portion of the elderly and the minority tribes, the "complexity" of Chinese characters has nothing to do with literacy rate, characters with more than 20 strokes are uncommon and usually found in highly literary texts.
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Gummieshk Triglot Newbie Hong Kong inkoasis.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5843 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 24 of 34 13 February 2009 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
TheNightBefore wrote:
Gummieshk wrote:
I've read on the news though, that Chinese
kids are 30% better at memorization than the international average, because they were
trained to memorize Chinese characters from a young age. Ever wonder why the Chinese
boy sitting next to you in class is pwning you at Bio? Exactly. |
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I agree that poverty is the root of illiteracy. But the above statement, if true,
cuts against your argument that illiteracy correlates with poverty rather than the
language's difficulty. How could children reap a memory benefit from learning the
language, if the language wasn't more difficult to memorize than other languages?
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Just because Chinese is hard doesn't mean that it's the direct cause of poverty.
Difficulty, after all, really depend's on one's perspective. For a foreigner who is
used to writing in alphabets... yeah Chinese can be super hard cause you're not used
to it. I myself, having been brought up in China all my life, thought that English was
the hardest language to master.
And even if it is hard, it doesn't mean that students are less willing to learn
it. As we've seen in previous posts, China has a literacy rate of about 93% and Taiwan
96%. Comparing the literacy rates of China to developed countries like Japan doesn't
stand, because the level of literacy directly correlates to the level of
modernization.On the other hand, if we compare China's literacy rate to that of
India's (which is also an emerging world power with a growth rate similar to that of
China), India's literacy rate is about 61%. This is because the Chinese government
focuses on educating the whole population, while India concentrates on developing its
higher education (the ratio of Indian uni graduates to China's is 4:1). Therefore when
we look at the problem of illiteracy, we also have to consider the country's cultural,
economic and political developments. We cannot simply look at a language, decide that
it's difficult, and conclude that it must have something to do with illiteracy.
Yes, Chinese students may have to work a bit harder, but solving China's illiteracy
problem can definitely not be solved by mere simplification or romanization.
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