Has anyone else noticed we have become a culture of infantilized images? When at one time we were a culture of the written word. Instead of restrooms with the words "Men" and "Women" we now have the stick figure of a female with a skirt or a male with pants or trousers to indicate the appropriate venue.
The late, great Canadian sociologist Dr. Marshal McLuhan wrote that literacy in the West was a temporary aberration that arose from the Italian Renaissance c. 1500 and Western culture would eventually return to a sort of "collage" thinking of arbitrary images and impressions jumbled together instead of the linear, rational thinking of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. I am reminded of this every day in the appearance of the thumbnail ads to the right of my email. Virtually every ad, no matter what they are hawking (and it is often some Big Pharma drug) is accompanied by a smiling, or simpering, or mawkish, or just plain stupid idiot's face, with an appropriate "catch" phrase admonishing me to buy some wonder drug de jure. Is there ever a rational, tightly reasoned synopsis as to why I should buy this product? No. That would be too much to ask for from a population of robotic drones.
So true. Those who are old enough can easily remember how they used to command PCs by typing in words at the C: \ prompt. Now you don't even have to be able to read--it's all pictures.
Howdy, Linh. Again, excellent prose - much to ponder. Mr Herzog is correct in his his observation. Yesterday, I attended a funeral and was dismayed to see how many fellow attendees were slovenly - almost childlike - in their attire and behavior. Heaven knows normally I wear jeans and work boots when working on the farm; but, my late friend Bill deserved to be shown respect, and so I wore a somber suit and tie. Even the funeral was chock full of modern, revisionist drivel - the minister droned on about our collective guilt over slavery while a nearby train rumbled by, blowing its mournful cry. Ah well, since it is 4/20, I'll head over to the nearest cowboy bar later to share the latest crop of homegrown with my fellow rednecks, roughnecks, bikers, welders, ex-cons, cattle ranchers, and general f*ckups, while we feed the jukebox, drink, and mourn the memory of the America of our youth. It was far from perfect, but there was honor, decency, and mutual respect. Most of all, there was a sense of hope for the future.
I don't have any language learning to share but I've been told twice by different psychics that I was Chinese in a previous life and drowned in the ocean when I was 9! I am reluctant to swim in the ocean but I hope you get a nice beach day today Linh. Always so pleased to see you in my inbox! Hope you are feeling strong and healthy today. Happy 420! We're having a big backyard rock and roll party tonight!
"Bathed in Mandarin, he can forget he's in Vietnam."
When I was taking classes and working at Sacramento City College a number of years ago I made the dumb mistake of attempting an Introductory Mandarin class. I recall waiting in the hall outside the classroom before the first day of class. While we waited for the preceding class to finish and exit the room the professor (I think I recall his name was Steve Hsu) looked at me quizzically as if he didn't quite know why I was there.
It turned out most of the students in the class were of Vietnamese heritage who spoke at least some Mandarin at home. I was left in the dirt unable to pick up more than a few words. I felt like a complete idiot. Overwhelmed, after several classes I just stopped showing up. Professor Hsu was kind enough to drop me officially from the roll to avoid the black mark of a "W" on my transcript but by that point such things didn't matter. By then old age was the big "W" on the failed transcript of my life.
I think I recall that to be considered fluent in Mandarin a child needs to learn at least 30,000 Chinese characters. We were fortunate in the West that the Phonicians c. 600 B.C. managed to condense most sounds within the human vocal range down to about 26 characters(the alphabet) which they passed on to the neighboring Greeks. Who then transcribed Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Although Socrates believed the new method of writing would ruin the memory of young Athenians. But I'm not sure about that in that my memory is failing me now. The good thing about losing one's memory is you don't remember doing so. Where did I put those car keys...?
I, too, took Elementary Chinese I (Mandarin) in college long, long ago. In my case, I was not a serious student back then; I was the kind that doesn't study at all, then tries to cram for the tests, a fatal shortcoming in language courses where daily effort is required.
Eventually I did learn basic spoken Mandarin, and learned a few things about language acquisition along the way. From Pimsleur courses (which are audio only) and tutoring non-native English speakers at the local literacy center, I gradually realized that the essence of any language is the spoken word, and practice is an essential part of the learning process. Alphabetic writing is only our imperfect way of representing speech sounds, and Chinese characters don't even do that.
In my college course, they started with spoken Mandarin, and only introduced Chinese characters after students had a handle on basic speech. This made it less difficult, although Westerners still have the alien hurdle of learning to use proper tones.
Pimsleur proved to me that writing is totally unnecessary to learn to speak a language. And at the literacy center, I learned that focusing too much on the written word actually seemed to impair student speech. One Spanish speaker I was teaching English to was doing quite well until I started introducing written English words; I noticed that her pronunciation deteriorated significantly after that, and eventually realized that the Roman letters as used in Spanish are not all pronounced the same way, and she was imposing those sounds on English pronunciations. If you've ever seen Pinyin (Romanized Mandarin), it's even further off from English.
The ancients had prodigious memories; I think Socrates was right in the long term...
Mandarin is a language that has to be taught at a very young age, in fact the younger the better (I started at 6). Unlike English, Mandarin as a written language is actually much more helpful in deciphering meanings. Within a sentence, even if you don't understand one or two words within it, you can guess what those words mean by their root characters that make up the entire word. The same rule applies in kanji, hence why a person who reads and writes Mandarin can almost guess their way around Japan.
Has anyone else noticed we have become a culture of infantilized images? When at one time we were a culture of the written word. Instead of restrooms with the words "Men" and "Women" we now have the stick figure of a female with a skirt or a male with pants or trousers to indicate the appropriate venue.
The late, great Canadian sociologist Dr. Marshal McLuhan wrote that literacy in the West was a temporary aberration that arose from the Italian Renaissance c. 1500 and Western culture would eventually return to a sort of "collage" thinking of arbitrary images and impressions jumbled together instead of the linear, rational thinking of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. I am reminded of this every day in the appearance of the thumbnail ads to the right of my email. Virtually every ad, no matter what they are hawking (and it is often some Big Pharma drug) is accompanied by a smiling, or simpering, or mawkish, or just plain stupid idiot's face, with an appropriate "catch" phrase admonishing me to buy some wonder drug de jure. Is there ever a rational, tightly reasoned synopsis as to why I should buy this product? No. That would be too much to ask for from a population of robotic drones.
So true. Those who are old enough can easily remember how they used to command PCs by typing in words at the C: \ prompt. Now you don't even have to be able to read--it's all pictures.
Howdy, Linh. Again, excellent prose - much to ponder. Mr Herzog is correct in his his observation. Yesterday, I attended a funeral and was dismayed to see how many fellow attendees were slovenly - almost childlike - in their attire and behavior. Heaven knows normally I wear jeans and work boots when working on the farm; but, my late friend Bill deserved to be shown respect, and so I wore a somber suit and tie. Even the funeral was chock full of modern, revisionist drivel - the minister droned on about our collective guilt over slavery while a nearby train rumbled by, blowing its mournful cry. Ah well, since it is 4/20, I'll head over to the nearest cowboy bar later to share the latest crop of homegrown with my fellow rednecks, roughnecks, bikers, welders, ex-cons, cattle ranchers, and general f*ckups, while we feed the jukebox, drink, and mourn the memory of the America of our youth. It was far from perfect, but there was honor, decency, and mutual respect. Most of all, there was a sense of hope for the future.
I don't have any language learning to share but I've been told twice by different psychics that I was Chinese in a previous life and drowned in the ocean when I was 9! I am reluctant to swim in the ocean but I hope you get a nice beach day today Linh. Always so pleased to see you in my inbox! Hope you are feeling strong and healthy today. Happy 420! We're having a big backyard rock and roll party tonight!
"Bathed in Mandarin, he can forget he's in Vietnam."
When I was taking classes and working at Sacramento City College a number of years ago I made the dumb mistake of attempting an Introductory Mandarin class. I recall waiting in the hall outside the classroom before the first day of class. While we waited for the preceding class to finish and exit the room the professor (I think I recall his name was Steve Hsu) looked at me quizzically as if he didn't quite know why I was there.
It turned out most of the students in the class were of Vietnamese heritage who spoke at least some Mandarin at home. I was left in the dirt unable to pick up more than a few words. I felt like a complete idiot. Overwhelmed, after several classes I just stopped showing up. Professor Hsu was kind enough to drop me officially from the roll to avoid the black mark of a "W" on my transcript but by that point such things didn't matter. By then old age was the big "W" on the failed transcript of my life.
I think I recall that to be considered fluent in Mandarin a child needs to learn at least 30,000 Chinese characters. We were fortunate in the West that the Phonicians c. 600 B.C. managed to condense most sounds within the human vocal range down to about 26 characters(the alphabet) which they passed on to the neighboring Greeks. Who then transcribed Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Although Socrates believed the new method of writing would ruin the memory of young Athenians. But I'm not sure about that in that my memory is failing me now. The good thing about losing one's memory is you don't remember doing so. Where did I put those car keys...?
I, too, took Elementary Chinese I (Mandarin) in college long, long ago. In my case, I was not a serious student back then; I was the kind that doesn't study at all, then tries to cram for the tests, a fatal shortcoming in language courses where daily effort is required.
Eventually I did learn basic spoken Mandarin, and learned a few things about language acquisition along the way. From Pimsleur courses (which are audio only) and tutoring non-native English speakers at the local literacy center, I gradually realized that the essence of any language is the spoken word, and practice is an essential part of the learning process. Alphabetic writing is only our imperfect way of representing speech sounds, and Chinese characters don't even do that.
In my college course, they started with spoken Mandarin, and only introduced Chinese characters after students had a handle on basic speech. This made it less difficult, although Westerners still have the alien hurdle of learning to use proper tones.
Pimsleur proved to me that writing is totally unnecessary to learn to speak a language. And at the literacy center, I learned that focusing too much on the written word actually seemed to impair student speech. One Spanish speaker I was teaching English to was doing quite well until I started introducing written English words; I noticed that her pronunciation deteriorated significantly after that, and eventually realized that the Roman letters as used in Spanish are not all pronounced the same way, and she was imposing those sounds on English pronunciations. If you've ever seen Pinyin (Romanized Mandarin), it's even further off from English.
The ancients had prodigious memories; I think Socrates was right in the long term...
Mandarin is a language that has to be taught at a very young age, in fact the younger the better (I started at 6). Unlike English, Mandarin as a written language is actually much more helpful in deciphering meanings. Within a sentence, even if you don't understand one or two words within it, you can guess what those words mean by their root characters that make up the entire word. The same rule applies in kanji, hence why a person who reads and writes Mandarin can almost guess their way around Japan.