LOL. Now you are taking it literally. I didn't say "all". I said "stupid". Stupid doesn't mean all, unlike that Jack Cafferty (who is a goon as well as thug, verbally) who was so terribly frank. Would I be just stupid as to bash myself? Having that said, it's been unfortunate that, yes, many might fall into this category (in terms of linguistic knowledge) because many of us keep on saying that our native script is damn hard to learn even for natives...
What I mean is there exists something _like_ "hypnotizing effects". Even if what you say isn't true, it could become true when a great majority believe it. I'm not very knowledgeable, but _I think_ it's been quite true for a lot of information now available. Travel information, difficulty of languages, knowledge of a lot of subjects (medicine, law, and precisely foreign languages in my city, unlike in China).... and more importantly, perhaps, the news about "potential" economic turmoil in the US (you know that better than I do, I think).
Many (now, this is weasel, of coz) non-natives don't have their own FSI scale at all. For example, many "smarter" Chinese are merely looking at the American FSI scale and see "wow, Chinese is the hardest, in the ??fourth?? category". Then some of them say English is very easy to learn, German is harder, Russian is much harder, and theirs is the hardest. Unfortunately, I personally don't know if a French/Brazilian/Japanese FSI scale ever exists (truly, no such thing by the PRC government, so no Chinese FSI scale). The ultimate power of newspeak means, EXACTLY, that if you can't even think of something of a language, like "whether the French have their own FSI scale", that part of the language doesn't exist (at least in your mind). There's no Oceania and newspeak, but the world now is pretty close to it, though never _is_ it, probably.
I can say (this is both weasel and over-generalizing; that's what Anglophone teachers taught me) with second thought: for over 99% (or the great majority; who cares, that's always weasel of me anyway) of the Chinese (or you can change it into many other nationalities), many foreign languages don't actually exist. If you go beyond English (which we use to communicate with so-called "foreigners", which mean essentially almost everybody from abroad), you must be a crazy language bluff. Of coz, they are important and useful for int'l commerce, but that path is so risky and unknown that you wouldn't dare to take. That sounds like a scam, but what comes to my mind now is: Japanese, for example, is popular enough at my place, so Japanese exists, although almost "nobody" except those associated with the business with Japan can understand it. But what about Portuguese? It doesn't exist. Sorry, even in Macau only civil servants need that obscure, unknown language for admin. purposes. You wouldn't see any use of it until you meet, if you are lucky, perhaps someone of exactly that foreign descent in that tiny city.
Knowing the existence of foreign languages isn't important at all. The fact (let's face it) that they don't exist in the minds of most of us (i.e. those you meet every day) already deny that "true" existence. Philosophy students can argue that "what you don't see may or may not exist", but again, in the case of Hong Kong's universities: in a particular philosophy department, for example, if all the professors don't know Chinese and have never studied Chinese philosophy, then of coz the syllabus won't ever include Chinese philosophy. In that sense, even though they know the Chinese have their own philosophy, which "might be very nice to study and teach in a Chinese place", at least in that department Chinese philosophy is pretty much non-existent. If you are a student of that department, you can't really apply your knowledge of something non-existent to do your essays well there.
So, by the same token, do those who say Russian is difficult really know how? You can't just read the declension tables and give "ugh" responses...
Even if it's all bluff, bluff can become truth if you succeed in hypnotizing everybody else. I wouldn't believe that my ancestors would say my native script is damn hard to learn, when they actually had nothing else to learn to become literate. To put it simply, it's just what people like Americans say, what Chinese teachers of foreign students like to say (to make money, of coz), and what stupid (NOT all) Chinese have come to believe.
That's a scam.
That letter looks darn good with my own "calligraphy", like a double-headed trident.
|
