Spotlight: A class of many languages

genzy · #1 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 02:15 AM

Learning many languages fosters more understanding, more knowledge absorbed, unity, speeds up globalization.

One fact to be admitted is that there are many Chinese Malaysians that can't read Chinese characters, due to the limited numbers of SRJK (C) Chinese schools. For examples, quite a number of my Chinese Malaysian colleagues can't read Chinese characters.

In Malaysia, the best way to learn Chinese characters is to be through SRJK (C) Chinese schools - 6 years learning Chinese characters.

The New Straits Times Online*

Quote:

2007/07/05
Spotlight: A class of many languages
By : Koh Lay Chin

Sekolah Kebangsaan Subang Jaya student Mohd Nazirul Abdul Rahim attempts to write in Mandarin as teacher Doris Lee guides him.

PETALING JAYA, Thurs:
"Wo ai ta ping pang" (I love playing table-tennis) scream 19 year-two pupils at the top of their lungs.

Iryani Amran (second from right) and Mohd Nazirul Abdul Rahim (left) joining their classmates in singing Mandarin songs.

There is an air of joy as the pupils at SK Subang Jaya accompany their statement with hand gestures.

A Mandarin class is in session with teacher Doris Lee having her hands full containing the excitement.

In 15 minutes, the 10 Chinese, five Malay and four Indian pupils have sung three Mandarin songs about the eyes, mouth and other facial features.

"They are just as attentive and enthusiastic as their Chinese counterparts," said Lee.
The school is taking part in a pilot project for the teaching of Mandarin and Tamil in national schools scheduled for next year.

And how has the programme been faring?

Lee, the designated Mandarin teacher, said the classes had been going well with the pupils enjoying the syllabus.

"The syllabus is simpler compared with pupils’ own language (POL).

"In the past, POL classes concentrated more on writing as the emphasis was on learning Chinese characters.

"Now we want to make it more fun, with songs and such so that they are more inclined to learn.

"And it’s working, because my pupils want to do more writing," she said.

Mandarin is now taught in 150 national schools and Tamil in another 70 as part of the pilot project.

The government hopes the move will make national schools more attractive to the Chinese and Indians, who have turned to vernacular schools.

Schools are trying out two models: Model 1 consists of five periods of each language a week (the last period of the school day) and model 2 with 12 periods of each language weekly.

A third model, where five periods are taught on Saturday, was shelved because of teachers’ allowance dispute.

Model 1 is the favourite, according to feedback.

A ministry source said there had been differing reactions from parents on the programme, depending on school location and the model of implementation.

Mostly though, the response has been positive.

"Curriculum Development Centre officers visited the schools involved, and it was found that more than 60 per cent of students showed high interest and enthusiasm in the learning process.

"They were actively involved although their speech and intonation still need improvement," the source said.

Another encouraging aspect has been the positive response from non-Chinese students to the Mandarin classes.

In some schools such as SK Sungai Layar, Kedah and SK Sultanah Asma, Kedah, there are 17 and 29 students respectively out of an average of 40 students per class.

There were, however, some problems which still needed to be worked out, ministry officials and participating school heads said.

Transportation for students, especially those in urban areas, posed some problems for many interested parents who could not arrange transport for their children as the classes were held out of regular school hours.

"Some of the children are so small, and classes start early at noon.

"Bus drivers refuse to send them earlier to school.

"I think if there were more access to transportation then there would be more students for the classes," SK Subang Jaya principal Zubidah Joha said.

She said apart from the transportation woes for the students, reactions from parents and students had been encouraging.

Despite the relatively smooth running thus far, the ministry feels it has to continue monitoring the programme closely, while ensuring there will be enough teachers and textbooks for the implementation next year.

And although there are worries from parties who feel the shortage of teachers could pose a problem, the ministry says it is currently training teachers for the move.

Supplying teachers for more then 100 schools may be simple enough but will there be enough teachers for more then 7,000?

An official said if the post-pilot prognosis was unfavourable, then it would be unlikely for the ministry to roll out full implementation.

However, Lee, who is also an English teacher, said like her, many teachers with a background or knowledge of Mandarin had been trained to teach the language, and many more were also following in her footsteps.

But in the meantime, for the students at least, learning another language is something both fun and challenging to do.

To bubbly Iryani Amran, whose tiny hands leap up when asked for volunteers to sing or write on the blackboard, nothing could be more fun.

"I like this class. I get to sing songs," she said.

genzy · #2 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 02:26 AM

Chinese Language Usage on the Internet ranks #2, not including these subset Chinese characters (known as Kanji) used by Japanese or (known as Hanja) by Koreans.

The Growth of the Chinese Internet market

Quote:

The Growth of the Chinese Internet market
By James Spencer
America and China’s Internet Growth

In 2006 America’s internet population grew by about three million, the equivalent of the population of Ireland. This seems like, in fact it is, a lot of people.

However with an internet population of 150 million it is merely a 2% growth. America’s internet population still has room to grow – but it will be at a slow and steady pace.

China’s internet population grew by ten times as much. That is it grew by 20%, or more than 30 million people. The Chinese internet population is now 137 million people. Another example is the explosive growth of Chinese blogs, growing by 24% in 2006.

It won’t be long before more Chinese are logging on than Americans.

Chinese Internet Penetration is still low

The internet penetration of China is far lower than America. Over half of all Americans have access to the internet. Just over 10% of Chinese have access to the internet.

That means that the Chinese internet growth needs to keep going at its current breakneck speed for eight years before it overtakes America’s internet penetration. It only needs two years before it gets to America’s numbers.

Chinese Internet Users are comparatively wealthy

One of the interesting facts about the Chinese online population is that it is so much more exclusive than its Western counterparts. Because internet access is comparatively expensive in China, the online population is of the top tier of the Chinese economy.

This access will expand, fast. But for now the Chinese population is loaded towards the luxury consumers and business users. 140 million of them, growing at 20%!

Get on the Ground Floor in China

China is already a vast internet market – the second biggest in the world. It is also expanding at an incredible rate. That’s the good news.

However China is not like other markets. Firstly it is in Chinese. This may seem obvious, but it is not simply a matter of getting a translation service – but getting a translation service that is used to placing search advertisements.

There is also the fact that Google is a niche player in China, and one that is likely to lose market share as the Chinese users become more interested in what its main rival – Baidu - offers.

And this is another fact about China. The main player is Baidu, a home grown search engine which offers access to free music. It consistently beats Google, one of the few major markets where Google is constantly beaten. It is also very focussed on China, with the only significant interface in English being for investors (it’s an American quoted company) and not advertisers.

To access the rich Chinese market you still need an intermediary. That is why ChinaSearchAds.com was formed. We have access to top transalators accredited with the Institute of Linguists, as well as experienced Search marketers. Not only that we are focussed on China and the Chinese speaking communities.

Language Usage on the Internet – Top 10 Languages Used in the Internet Article

Quote:

Language Usage on the Internet

The number of recorded internet users has reached the staggering figure of 812,931,592 worldwide. Leading in absolute terms, with more than 35% of total internet users, English is smashed by those 526,288,835 users that access internet in a different language. While a considerable share of people from non English-speaking countries are more or less proficient in the language, recent data has shown that in China 85% of the users prefer to access pages in their native language. That figure is 84% for Japan, 82% for Brazil and Spain, 81% for Argentina and Peru and 79% for Germany.

Top 10 Languages on the Internet
Language Highlights
ENGLISH

*
USA – There are 202.45 million Americans now online, according to InternetWorld Stats (July, 2004). Since there are 45 million Americans who do not speak English at home, they also access the internet in their own native language. Ethnologue estimates that 8.4 million Americans cannot read English (out of the 45 million non-English-speaking people in the US).
*
UK has 34.9 million people online (Source: Nielsen NetRatings, Aug., 2004).
*
Canada has 20.45 million people online, most of whom can access the internet in English, according to Internet World Stats (2004).
*
Australia has 13.5 million (Nielsen NetRatings, Aug., 2004)
*
Ireland has 1.3 million people online (Source: Amarach Consulting, Sep., 2003).
*
South Africa has 3.5 million people online (Source: Internet World, 2004)

CHINESE

There are 87 million people online in mainland China, according to CCNIC (July, 2004). Hong Kong represents another 4.9 million (Nielsen/NetRatings, Aug., 2004). One must also add 8.8 million in Taiwan (ITU, Dec., 2003) and 2.14 million people in Singapore online. ITU estimates 8.7 million Malaysians online (2003), where Mandarin Chinese is spoken by one-third of the population. There are another 1.5 million Americans who access the internet in Chinese.
JAPANESE

There are 66.5 million internet users in Japan (Nielsen NetRatings: Aug., 2004). GlobalReach estimate 280,000 Americans accessing the internet in Japanese.
SPANISH

Research by Nielsen NetRatings shows over 14.3 million people online in Spain (Aug., 2004). Some 12.25 million people are online in Mexico (source: ITU, Dec., 2003). Within the US, there are 26 million Hispanics online.
GERMAN

There are currently 46.6 million Germans online, to which one must add 3.1 million German-speakers in Switzerland (72% of the 4.3 million Swiss online), and 3.7 million in Austria (source: ITU, Dec., 2003). This gives a total of 54.2 million German-speaking people online worldwide.
FRENCH

There are 22.4 million people in France online (Nielsen/NetRatings, Feb., 2004). French-speaking Canada follows at 2.3 million people online (according to The Daily Statistics, March, 2001). One must add 1.0 million French-speakers in Switzerland and 900,000 in Belgium. Globally, there's a total of 36.4 M French-speaking people online.
PORTUGUESE

There are some 19.3 million Brazilians online, according to Nielsen/NetRatings (Aug., 2004). To this must be added another 4.4 million in Portugal (source: ITU, Dec., 2003).
DUTCH

The latest figures from Nielsen NetRatings state that there are 10.8 million people online in Netherlands (Aug., 2004). Among the 3.8 million people online in Belgium three-quarters of them, or 2.9 million, are Flemish (Dutch-speaking). Combined Dutch-speaking online populations is 13.5 million.
POLISH

Some 8.9 million people from Poland are online, according to the ITU (Dec., 2003). GlobalReach estimate another 100,000 Polish in Germany and 410,000 Americans who access the internet in Polish from home. That makes a total of 9.5 million Polish-speakers online worldwide.

Global internet usage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

Position Language Users (m) Users Total Population (m) GDP (b) World Economy GDP Per Capita
1 English 295.4 35.2% 508
2 Chinese 110.0 13.7% 874 $6,328 13% $7,200
3 Spanish 86.0 12% 410 $2,500 8.9% $7,100
4 Japanese 67.1 8.4% 125 $3,400 8% $27,200
5 German 55.3 6.9% 101 $2,679 5.8% $26,800
6 French 33.9 4.2% 100 $1,517 4.2% $19,700
7 Korean 31.3 3.9% 78 $887 2% $11,400
8 Italian 30.4 3.3% 62 $1,251 3.6% $20,100
9 Portuguese 24.4 3.1% 176 $1,487 3.6% $8,400
10 Russian 22 167 $822 1.8% $4,900

genzy · #3 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 02:57 AM

http://www.logoi.com/notes/japanese_...haracters.html

Quote:

How come Japanese people use Chinese characters?

This is because during the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD in China), when Chinese writing began to migrate into Japan on a large scale, China was the single most important cultural power in Eastern Asia. The Japanese did not borrow Chinese writing to write their own language, they borrowed the Chinese language as the language of education and culture. Early Japanese writings are essentially written in classical Chinese. To be able to write in medieval Japan basically meant to be able to read and write Chinese. This language was called by the Japanese kango, that is, Chinese language.

Later on, as the need to write extended to the general population, it became important to be able to record spoken Japanese language. This began with using the Chinese characters for the phonetic values and then by developing two kinds of unique phonetic systems. These two systems are called hiragana and katakana and are still used in conjunction with the Chinese characters. Thus Japanese people today write with a combination of three different kinds of scripts, which together are perfectly capable of recording their native language.

Although today, in the days of Pokemon, manga, and Playstation games, it is well-known that Japanese use Chinese characters, people are less conscious of the fact that other nations in Eastern Asia used to use Chinese characters too. The most important of these were the Koreans and the Vietnamese. Similar to the Japanese model, both the Koreans and the Vietnamese developed their own way of writing by modifying the original Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese replaced this with the French-inspired Latin alphabet in the 18th century, while the Koreans developed their unique phonetic syllabary, which they continue to use to this very day.

(It's more detailed)
http://www.kanji.org/kanji/japanese/writing/outline.htm

Quote:

Contents:
1. The Origin of Chinese Characters
1.1 The Birth of a Pictographic Scrip
1.2 Formation of Chinese Characters
2. Introduction of Chinese Characters to Japan
2.1 Early Stages
2.2 On and Kun Readings
2.3 Classification of On Reading
2.4 Special Uses
2.5 Language Reforms
3. Chinese Characters in Japanese
3.1 The Japanese Script
3.2 Functions of Kanji
3.3 Word-Formation
3.4 Meaning of Kanji

......

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