Shanghaiist: "Lovely" Chinese teachers rejected by rowdy British students

deadchingis

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:05:12 +0800

There are a few foreign interpreters on the market, but not many (some ethnic Chinese, some not). They're quite low profile. However there aren't actually that many truly professional interpreters out there doing Chinese - the idea of a professional interpreter is still in its infancy. Plus professionals don't often take the sort of jobs that see you sitting behind government leaders - conferences are way more interesting and pay better, and leaders' meetings tend to be done by in-house embassy, MFA or MOFCOM people, who vary enormously in quality. MFA and MOFCOM now have extreme trouble retaining talented interpreters, as you might expect.

guest

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:14:28 +0800

Well, I can see you're coming to the subject with an open mind, so after you've read the BBC article about poetry in Esperanto being nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature (see link above), why not spend half an hour or so reading through a couple of dozen personal accounts of how the language has influenced people's lives? Enjoy! PS I do usually have a strict rule about not replying to forum trolls, so this is probably my last post here.

guest

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:57:21 +0800

no one can provide any proof that esperanto is a real language and not some coffee shop, marijuana induced foolishness passed off by liberal elitist snobs as a language. down with esspresso, er, esperanto.

guest

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:52:40 +0800

Nanheyangrouchuan wrote: > Esperanto is [...] used by a small group who > swear up and down it is the best and love to > keep little secrets that no one else can > understand. Maybe you've only come across a few evangelical nutjobs who happen to speak Esperanto; if so, well, sorry about that, but I'd recommend that you don't judge every speaker of the language on the basis of those few. You may well be right, that some people try to ram it down people's throats as "the best thing ever, that everyone should learn immediately, or they're stupid". Again, if that's the first contact you've had with the language, that's rather unfortunate. However, as I said, lots of really quite ordinary people also use the language, mostly for meeting and conversing with people from a broad range of foreign cultures. Lots of mixed-nationality couples form, whose only common language is Esperanto, but if you think that that somehow restricts their possibilities for expressing their emotions for each other... well, you've clearly never chatted anyone up in Esperanto! It works just like it does in any other language. :o) An obvious product of this phenomenon is that of the first-language Esperanto speaker. Nobody in the world speaks *only* Esperanto, but something like 1000 people speak it as a "native" language, i.e. learnt from their parents as a small child alongside one or more other languages. William Auld's poetry was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. He didn't win, unfortunately, and has now sadly died, so that's one prize he won't be winning, but you don't get even a nomination for writing junk in a non-existent language. You could be forgiven for not knowing about any of the above. It's not something you read about in the papers very often. However, that doesn't make it any less true.

nanheyangrouchuan

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:47:04 +0800

Modern Hebrew is hardly false, like modern english, modern chinese or any other native, genuine language these are all based on ancient languages with long and rich histories that have to do with the rise of man as a species. Esperanto is like a flavor of Linux, used by a small group who swear up and down it is the best and love to keep little secrets that no one else can understand. Swahili from what I've been told is a major international language of commerce and conversation in Africa, Bulgarian may not be as wide spread but none the less is a real language. Arapaho is hardly arcane and if you live/work in the SW US, it might not be a bad idea to have it as a back-up behind english and spanish.

guest

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:55:33 +0800

Just a quick comment to/about nanheyangrouchuan: I find it really interesting, seriously, that people often feel they MUST have an opinion about Esperanto. The opinion often seems to be either very strongly for or very strongly against. And I'm not sure why that is. If you ask people what they think about Bulgarian, or Swahili, or Arapaho, people usually just say, "I don't know much about them, really." It's rare to find someone who'd say, "Don't waste your time learning that crap!" Nanheyangrouchuan seems to have trouble accepting that a language can grow out of a man-made project, but that's exactly how Nynorsk was born (before Esperanto) and of course Modern Hebrew (when Esperanto had already been around for decades). That Esperanto is a fully-fledged language is hardly open to debate -- just go and observe it being used. Why does it surprise people to find out that it's used for drunken conversations, dissertations, flirting, Nobel-prize-nominated poetry, botany, online chatting... in other words, all the same things you'd use any other language for?

guest

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:41:29 +0800

Not sure how serious you thought you were being in suggesting Esperanto for English school children, but it's happening! The Springboard2Languages project provides a two-year syllabus and course materials for introducing primary school kids to foreign language learning, by teaching them Esperanto as a "starter language". Through it, they learn a lot about their own language too; they succeed in learning and speaking a foreign language; they use it to correspond with partner schools in Germany, France and Hungary, and there's an exchange coming up next year too.

guest

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 05:22:42 +0800

Esperanto is a joke. Not only SHOULD everyone learn English, but everyone DOES - so ha ha ha

guest

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:54:59 +0800

I think the English mastery is still questionable, judging by your poor grammar ande usage. Perhaps the Esperanto lesson monies would have been better spent elsewhere.

guest

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:55:00 +0800

Enrique, Being either or both a native speaker of Spanish and English, it is no surprise espreranto was so easy, but it is still a fake language with no real culture or history behind it. You think in Spanish or English, not esperanto, because those are real languages and one or both are your native languages. And I suppose you read esperanto newspapers? Write in esperanto? Communicate your deepest feelings in esperanto? esperanto is merely a form of spanglish. nanheyangrouchuan

guest

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:58:19 +0800

yeah bitches! Reconaize the real deal.

Enrique

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:17:26 +0800

Dear Nanheyangrouchuan, Thank you for calling me an idiot. I am fluent in Spanish, Esperanto and English, learned in that order. >learn to speak a real language. Very good! Please tell me which language to learn. Learning Esperanto took me about 5% of the time it took me to learn English. May I ask you please find out what Esperanto is? I learned Esperanto in 1959. I have used it during 48 years. It is wonderful. When I was at the home of people in other countries, or when people from other countries visited in my home, most of the time we spoke Esperanto. I met those people, mainly because we all speak Esperanto. Speaking English doesn't help me to visit people in other countries. I visited China in 2004: http://www.esperantofre.com/uk89 This is what I found there about language: "When they spoke English to me, it was "because they wanted to sell me something. "When they spoke Esperanto to me, it was "because they wanted to be my friends." Please email me at [Enrike (at) aol (dot) com] You can learn and listen to Esperanto at http://esperantofre.com/eroj/ilo01a.htm lernu.net Best wishes, Enrique

guest

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:49:41 +0800

Making up a language and mastering it is no great skill, mastering a real language with a long history behind it (including English, with both Germanic and Latin backgrounds) requires absorbing the way the native speakers of said language think. Fuck Espresso, er, esperanto. nanheyangrouchuan

guest

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:24:13 +0800

I speak a language that was created - by monkeys furiously typing on an old fashioned type writer! Therefore, I ick ass, bitches!

guest

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:04:43 +0800

I speak Esperanto fluently. Why, therefore am I am idiot?

nanheyangrouchuan

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:50:53 +0800

Esperanto is for idiots, learn to speak a real language.

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:43:46 +0800

The English language will never stay the international language. It is not the international language now. Total delusion! Prejudice against Esperanto however does exist. We need to fight prejudice

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:07:56 +0800

#11 if you do decide to come to China, do yourself a favor and at least learn some of the basics first. It's makes everything a lot easier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:48:45 +0800

as a white guy in the US i can't wait to learn cantonese. That said, the international language, unfortunately, is going to stay english. I do think that to work in china you should at least know conversational cantonese (or is it mandarin that is spoken in shanghai?).

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 08:08:26 +0800

Shop Girl I love you even more!!! Muwhahahahhaahah

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:46:00 +0800

"Shopgirl" is a moron and the fact she says what she does, means the opposite is true. Chinese peole love to say that Chinese will be the number 1 language instead of English - it's not going to happen, ever. UK students are NOT learning Chinese unless it's a specialty in a college. It's just propaganda. The world learns ENGLISH, no one learns Chinese in school. To "understand China more deeply", you just need to like corruption, not give a shit about anyone else and throw away female children. job done.

guest

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:51:27 +0800

SHOP GIRL I LOVE YOU! We can speak Chinese together any day!

guest

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:40:23 +0800

wow a lot of haters on here. One would almost think there was more than a little jealousy of epxats with big phat packages at play here!

guest

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:19:08 +0800

i totally agree with this blog entry. Some foreigners come to SH and think it will be so easy, it will be for now, but in 5 years, maybe even 2,3 years you will realize how hard it is to be successful without knowing Chinese. thank god it is a hard language so the only persistent people will last studying it. //Shopgirl's Shanghai Lifestyle Blog

nanheyangrouchuan

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:35:22 +0800

Esperanto is a half-baked scrub language. Ebonics has more native roots.

guest

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:20:13 +0800

And what's WRONG with teaching "nia kara lingvo" -Esperanto - instead of English? Vilchjo de Mesao Arizono, Usono.

nanheyangrouchuan

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:01:09 +0800

The picture of the Chinese teacher is not promising. Any young, inexperienced teacher in a classroom would get their ass kicked on day one, in a foreign culture it is much tougher. A better list of candidates would be those Chinese teachers who already teach foreigners in China. Though the foreign gov'ts would have to make it worth their while as these teachers are usually teaching corporate types for good money. As for languages, english will probably still be dominant in 50 years and relying on kids of immigrants to the West or locally those gifted enough to master a language at the level of fluency is an expensive exercise. Math is the universal language and there is a great effort around the world to develop software that can translate among at least the major languages, the basis of this software is linguistic geometry I believe. Regardless of your culture, if you are good in your field and are amiable with others there is no reason you can't do well for your company abroad. Your local peers will understand your ideas as long as you present them in the right context. HR people are trying to avoid expat packages by finding S. Asians because most of them are used to the shitty life that China has to offer, besides lingual and cultural familiarity. It is also true that HRs and executive baby boomers are trying to commoditize and data warehouse knowledge on their way to retirement so that no one can use individually unique skills to make themselves invaluable and indispensable to the market. Thus, true innovation is stifled unless approved by management. baby boomers suck. Rise up.

guest

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:31:46 +0800

Do what some Chinese professors do in the States, learn power point! Super hard tests for the win!

guest

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:30:18 +0800

I was a technical trainer in the US many years ago. Initially I was employed to train engineers from China using Mandarin. Later on, because I am bilingual, I had classes from engineers in the US, and all other international locations. Well, unless one has done it, one would not realized the vase differences between how to teach Chinese vs US students or students from the S. American regions (for example). Teaching Chinese students is like 'stuff ducks (Chinese expressions)' They generally expect to have everything lined up for them. Teaching US students, for example, one gives them lots of room for 'innovative' ideas. Therefore it is much harder to teach US students because THE TEACHER has to be very flexible, very knowledgeable, very active in responding to questions ... In short, teaching Chinese students is a piece of cake. Teaching US students (I suppose UK students would be much the same) is not something I would take it VERY LIGHTLY.