Posted on 01/27/2006 6:56:05 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Johannesburg, 26 Jan. (AKI) - Students at all Zimbabwean universities will later this year be required to learn to speak and write Chinese, Zimbabwe's education minister has announced. The decision is part of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's offensive to promote his "Look East" policy, minister Stan Mudenge said. There was a "compelling need" to bring the peoples of the two countries together, Mudenge was quoted as saying by the Johannesburg daily, The Star.
Zimbabwe is seeking to strengthen its ties with China to offset Western sanctions imposed on Mugabe who has been accused of persecuting political opponents.
But Zimbabwean students who have been told to become fluent in tongue-twisting Mandarin, are outraged by the veteran leader's decision.
"It seems they are trying every political gimmick to lure the Chinese into this country to bankroll their bankrupt regime. But they should not do that at the expense of students," Washington Katema, president of the Zimbabwe National Association of Student Unions, was quoted as saying by The Star.
Critics have dismissed Mugabe's "Look East" policy as an empty political slogan that won't rescue Zimbabwe's collapsed economy.
Hope they invent EbonicChinese so I can learns it. Anything would be easier than learning to read and write Chinese.
This is either insanity or genius... we'll see.
I once asked a China expert from the Dept. of State how long it would take to become operatively fluent in Chinese, and the answer was 10 years - just to speak it.
Also, this debate is going on in our local school system, which now already offers French, German, Spanish, Latin and Japanese. They want to replace German with Chinese. It would be interesting to know if such dialog is going on in other school systems across the US.
Note to Zims who still love freedom:
....kill Mugabe if you can.
China will not save Zimbabwe. China might buy Zimbabwe products if they ever get to the point of producing anything again, but that's about it.
I'm currently taking Chinese. I'm into my 3rd semester. It is extremely difficult to to pronounce correctly. It's a tone based language and the sounds are not natural in western languages. I actually find reading and writing the easier part. I have 3 hour class and about 15 hours of study a week. I just finished 2 hours of study to get 4 words down. I have 23 more to learn by Tuesday night. Guess what I'm doing this weekend.
Just load up on MSG and drink boxed wine. You'll do fine.
Beer?
And BBQ ribs.... mmmm
Thanks for speaking your mind Mr. Katema. It's been nice knowin' ya.
The opening moves in China's little game of chess.
I'm confident that Bush is onto them, but I worry that any Democrat successor would be likely to believe Chinese aggression is a figment of our paranoia.
I am learing Chinese myself now. I work with many Chinese, so it is actually kind of easy to immerse myself in the language. Are you using any software or websites outside of your class materials?
A good start would be to learn all the Chinese words for the food that people in Zimbabwe are deprived of. "Okay Class, how many people have had fruit this month? No one? Well, here's the Chinese word for fruit..."
As someone who can speak/read/write Chinese and has lived in Taiwan, I can assure everyone there is no better way to hold back a nation than to make them learn Chinese. The writing system needs to be modernized into a phonetic system, but (un)fortunately, it will never happen. Chinese children spend a very large percentage of their childhood trying to remember these stupid characters, only to forget them if they ever stop using them for a period of time. Because of this, they don't have time to properly learn other subjects and/or have a social life. It is a major problem and Zimbabwe adopting it is just another nail in the countries coffin.
China doesn't intend to save zim, or buy it; you are correct in that. They intend to colonize it and take it over completely in a military and political sense. They want the resources, and they'll have no patience and less understanding or compassion for the children running it now.
BTW: Ou yeu sic tzan-tzan.
The Chinese are too smart to fall for a fool like Mugabe. They KNOW he and his supporters will fall one day, and fall extremely hard. You don't want to be around when that happens.
The only thing he's a genius at is staying alive and in power. More to the point however, he's a kook, and there are too many in the world like him.
Another problem with Chinese is that it has way more kanji (pictograms) than Japanese (which actually also uses 2 more phonetic alphabets of 50 simple characters each).
You can get by in Japan knowing about 2500 pictograms, but with Chinese, well...you'd probably have to know at least 700% more than that:
-->TO READ CHINESE RELIABLY YOU MUST KNOW WELL OVER 10,000 INDIVIDUALLY MEMORIZED CHARACTERS.<--
One nice thing about Chinese over Japanese is that there is one way only of saying each character, whereas in Japanese the pronunciation of each character changes, depending on different things.
Also the intonation in Chinese is totally crazy. Inflection is a HUGE deal.
If you can read Japanese, you can SORT OF get the gist of Chinese signs, menus, etc. But many times you guess a bit, and you're TOTALLY off.
To order ALL university students in Zimbabwe to learn Chinese is the act of a complete madman, which is fitting, come to think of it...
I said that "there is one way only of saying each character". Errr, strictly speaking, that's actually not so:
That's just for each Chinese dialect INDIVIDUALLY.
Like, since there's more than one dialect, there is, in fact, more than one way to say Chinese characters in Chinese.
The reading/writing system that I think is the picture of absolute logic is KOREAN. They have a phonetic system that I believe any DULLARD can learn in...two days, I guess.
Easier than the roman letters we use, perhaps.
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