I pay a lot of attention to the way belief systems prevent us from solving some of the more important problems in the world today. By belief systems, I'm not talking about anything grandiose, but just the assumptions that are made, often unconsciously, about everyday matters. For instance, In a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor,


Matt Williams and Jerome Cohen write:

"The road to successful communication with China is a long one. Only 2.2 million of 290 million Americans speak Chinese, and at least 85 percent of them are of Chinese descent. This deficiency should be unsurprising given that 98 percent of US higher education language enrollment is in Western European languages. Creating interest in one of the most difficult languages in the world requires exchange programs for numerous parts of society."

www.csmonitor.com/2005/0930/p09s02-coop.html
(if clicking the link doesn't work, copy and past into your browser)

This thinking represents an assumption that is at once untrue, and quite damaging.

The statement that "Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world" does a great disservice, not just to people who want to learn Chinese, but also to those who espouse the goal of promoting greater understanding between China and other countries. In absolute terms Chinese is easy - probably easier than many other languages, especially English. I'm not nuts. Think about it, if a billion people, a not-small proportion of whom are still illiterate, speak Chinese then it can't be all that difficult.

I'll go so far to say that Chinese can be learnedby a person who has not grown up with the language, to the level of good basic fluency, within a year. Of course, living in China, and going about things the right way, makes things somewhat easier than if you're living in a non-Chinese environment with minimal contact with the language. Personally, I wouldn't bother to learn any language unless I was in the environment. Why? Simple, really. It's because, once you're in the language environment the learning can happen in months, NOT years .

The effective, rapid, easy learning of Chinese (or other languages for that matter) is blocked by two things - bad beliefs and bad methods (both of learning and teaching). Let me explain the logic here, using the above quote as a starting point.

Initially, the belief that Chinese is "one of the most difficult languages in the world" creates a barrier to even trying. This leads to the low levels of enrollment that Cohen and Williams are concerned about. It also leads to other strange things happening such as Westerners in Hong Kong enrolling their children in French classes because "Chinese is just too hard".

Nevertheless, some people still give it a go, but with the belief of immense difficulty floating in the background. For these intrepid learners, this belief soon collides with ineffective means of teaching and learning language, a collision that rapidly creates a wonderful self-fulfilling prophesy. A learner starts with the idea that "Chinese is hard, so my effort will be in vain, but let me try anyway." This trying comes not from the certainty of success, but from the suspicion of certain failure. Not a good place to begin. In most cases the brain bows to futility, evidenced by a refusal to remember things, and a seeming inability to hear any differences between words

In the face of now almost certain failure the learner continues trying to acquire the language, but using methods better fitted to stunning an ox than opening a mind. Trying to work with grammar before you can hear distinctions in how things are said confuses the mind. Trying to read before you can make the right sounds creates a false sense of security, soon to be crushed by the reality on the street. Focusing on detail and analysis before your brain has recognized the larger patterns of the language creates logical, comparative traps that slow down the acquistion process. These unnecessary barriers create many difficulties, and make the language learning process so much harder than it needs to be.

The thought then follows: "Oh, I was right, it is hard. I'll give up now". The initial belief is confirmed, and one can retreat in the comfortable knowledge that it is natural and normal to have failed. Which it is not. I think it is merely sad. Unnecessary.

Things really don't have to be this way. The story of a young man who mastered Mandarin in a year shows what is clearly possible for all. Paul was historically quite "average", or even poor, at learning languages. Nevertheless, he set himself a goal of being fluent in Mandarin (from a zero base) in one year. He then used the techniques that good language learners use (in varying combinations), and he has been successful in achieving his goal. To get his story first hand, go to paulie.nomadlife.org/

As Paul (and many others) have discovered, a normally intelligent person can master Chinese very rapidly. The language is very logical, with simple rules. As with any other language, learning to communicate rather than analyse develops competence very rapidly. Building just a small vocabulary allows you to say most things because of the way you combine different elements. Chinese is not riddled with exceptions, the way English is. The tones are no more daunting than hearing the difference between irritation and surprise in a loved-one's voice. And the written script actually helps because you get to engage your visual brain in the language process much more than is true for Romanized languages.

Which is why I think we need to end the myth that Chinese is hard, (or any other language for that matter). Instead, we should focus on methods that are known to work, and apply these as broadly as possible. That should be the starting point of any program intended to promote the learning of any language, Chinese in particular. Destroying the myth of difficulty will be, by far, the most effective way of getting people from different countries talking to each other.

So, the next time you hear someone saying "Chinese is really hard" remember - a billion people speak it.

Copyright Chris Lonsdale 2006