The Chinese Language – a New Craze

By LIU RENJIE

Marie is a tour guide from France’s Cote d’Azure. She didn’t waste a minute of her 20-day tour in China. Apart from doing the usual sightseeing and eating out in restaurants, Marie and her companions also attended an intensive Chinese training course. Marie aspires to be a Chinese tour guide in her native land. She reckons that as France attracts more and more Chinese students, grasping the language will bring her better jobs.

The current “Chinese language craze” was not spurred simply by the country’s ancient culture. The primary goal for most foreigners learning Chinese is to find a better job. According to Dr. Lou Tianyang, a Chinese language teacher at the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute (Erwai), Business Chinese and Traditional Chinese Medicinal language courses are more popular among those who stay in China for the long-term, while tourism courses are favored by those who staying for a shorter time. Upon graduation, some foreign students fined work at international companies in China, while others return home to help build bridges between China and their respective countries. Jean, a law major from Université de Lyon III, came to China after he graduated and is currently studying at the Beijing Erwai. He will take the HSK (the Chinese proficiency test) next year and then return to France to work for airlines in China-related issues.

All four classrooms in the Jia Jia Training Center are packed with students. Some are learning English, while others are studying middle school mathematics and physics. They are mainly Korean. It’s estimated that about 20,000 Koreans live in Wangjing in the north of Beijing, and the community grows every year. China has surpassed the United States to become Korea’s largest trading partner, and more and more Koreans are coming to the country to work, study and live, thereby boosting the Chinese language craze.

Mrs. Kim and her husband came to China to do business, and she made great headway with the language in just six months time. Seeing so many other Korean kids around him learning Chinese, her son decided to follow suit. The Kims are now a family of Chinese learners.

The Chinese Language Craze

Dr. Lou attended the first-ever World Chinese Conference held in Beijing in July. He says, “The conference was attended by delegates from 70 different countries, which shows the increasing popularity of Chinese among language learners throughout the world.” Zhang Xinsheng, Vice Minister of Education and deputy director of the State Leading Group for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, echoes Lou’s point, saying that the demand has now expanded from the academic and teaching fields to individuals and governments.

Developing and developed countries alike have raised the standard of Chinese teaching to meet the needs of different social groups. Zhang says that at the end of 2003, the US launched the AP (Advanced Placement) Chinese Project, a middle school Chinese credit that is recognized by colleges. Some 2,500 schools are already planning to offer the AP Chinese course, and appreciable US middle schools jump from the previous figure 200 US schools that offered Chinese courses.

Southeast Asia has about 20,000 Chinese language teachers, and an abundance of schools offering Chinese courses, yet the region still struggles to keep pace with demand. Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, for instance, announced plans to start Chinese language classes in 8,039 middle schools between 2004 and 2007, while Korea hopes to run Chinese courses in all its primary and middle schools by 2007. In Korea, HSK scores are now a criterion for promotion in many large companies. From just 20 in the 1980s, some 347 Korean universities run Chinese language courses today.

Is Chinese Difficult?

Tim is a Canadian student who has lived in China for three years. Although he has no problem with Chinese grammar, he finds writing and pronunciation difficult. Tim’s compatriot Peter has similar problems, particularly with the four tones, but he says that as long as he perseveres with pinyin, the alphabetical way of writing Chinese, it will become easier. Chinese language teachers know that writing is more of a headache for Western students, compared to those from Korea and Japan who pick it up easily due to its similarities to their own languages. Westerners also encounter problems with pronunciation because many of the tones have no counterparts in Western languages.

In spite of these problems, people are beginning to admit that the “difficulty” in learning Chinese is exaggerated. Professor Joel Bellassen of the French Ministry of Education says, “If the interest and environment are there, learning Chinese is not difficult. From letters to characters, entering the Chinese language empire is a challenge to our thinking, and a training task for our memory.” Bellassen adds that while learning Chinese is a significant switch for most foreigners, the claim that “Chinese is difficult to learn” is inaccurate.

Monique is a retiree who came to China with her husband to learn the language. She says that she and her spouse they were captivated by the unique culture that they witnessed during the Sino-French Culture Year, and that they made up their minds to learn Chinese. Having developed a strong interest in the language, Monique is confident that she will succeed

Chinese Language’s Future

The surging interest in the Chinese language has prompted some experts to predict that it may one day surpass English as the most widely-learned foreign language. Not all agree, however. One experienced Chinese teacher says that although Chinese undoubtedly boasts the largest number of speakers, its popularity lags far behind English. While a craze certainly exists in regional countries such as Korea and Japan, this is not necessarily the case around the world. He adds that the influence of English expanded during a period when the world was awed by UK and US, the dominating economic powers, and that as economic and cultural diversity are today’s buzz words, it is unlikely that English learners will be supplanted by students of Chinese.

French tourist Lina said that although more and more French are learning Chinese, its popularity does not compare to English, German or Spanish. Chinese and Italian are the third most studied languages in France.

Global or not, the rising Chinese language learning craze is there for all to see, and the Chinese government is taking active measures to promote it overseas. Last year, the State Council approved the “Chinese Bridge” project, which aims to speed up the process of building the “Confucius Institute” and “Great Wall Chinese,” two key Chinese training schools that are blossoming overseas. As the country continues to develop at its current pace, who knows, the Chinese language might just overtake English at some point in the future.