Will Chinese ever master English?

[chenpv]

I wont argue that English and Chinese bear little in common. But I do believe that we can master both language pretty well at the same time. There are scientific evidences that different cerebral regions are involved when people are using these two languages. So biologically speaking, the two regions of brain can both be developed pretty well if proper methods or appoaches are applied, which suggests the possibility of mastering the two languages. However, the reality deviates from the theory to some extent. In my opinion, the decisive factor is our attitudes to the other language we are learning. Most of us, including me , will regard or declare ourselves incapable of learning another language, and some may even go to extremes that an inner repugnance gradually forms. Not to say, these feelings mask what we can achieve in reality. Anyway, brain is such an enigmatic organ that, even you know whats wrong there, you can do little about it.

[Jose]

I agree with Wushijiao that the fact that English and Chinese are unrelated languages is the main reson why it is so difficult for Chinese speakers to attain a high level of English. The many differences between the two languages cover both vocabulary and grammar:

1. Vocabulary

There's very little common vocabulary in the two languages. Try translating words like "theatre", "museum", "president" into any other European language, and you will see that they're very similar to the English words. Because of that, speakers of other European languages have a big advantage over Chinese people when learning English, as a good deal of vocabulary can be passively recognised.

2. Grammar

Chinese and English are two unrelated languages, and this means that they are very different structurally. Indo-European languages like most languages spoken in Europe and Northern India share similar characteristics. As an example, let's think of the following two sentences in English:

The neighbour has come.

A neighbour has come.

If we try to translate those two sentences into other European languages we usually get the same difference in meaning by using the definite and indefinite versions of the article. For example, in Spanish and German, those two sentences would be rendered as "el vecino ha venido" vs. "un vecino ha venido" and "der Nachbar ist gekommen" vs. "ein Nachbar ist gekommen". Even the use of an auxiliary verb plus a participle to express the perfective past is similar to English in these languages.

However, Chinese doen't have the concept of definite and indefinite articles, and this makes it much more difficult to translate the above two sentences into Chinese. Since a noun in preverbal posistion usually has definite reference in Chinese, I think the first one should be:

鄰居來了

whereas the second one would be (I think):

有一個鄰居來了

In this example, we can see how a simple difference between a definite and an indefinite subject is expressed through very different mechanisms in English and Chinese. The perfective aspect of the verb is also marked in a completely different way.

Add to that the different scripts and the completely different sound systems, and it is no wonder that Chinese people find it very difficult to learn European languages, and that speakers of European languages find it so difficult to say simple sentences in Chinese, even after years of study.

[笨笨德]

something i frequently try to explain to my friends over here is taiwan when they are feeling depressed about their english language ability, is that their knowledge of english grammar is usually better than that of their english teacher and most of what they write and speak is, indeed, perfectly grammatical. It just lacks a colloquial touch, but they are developing their own colloquial framework, which is just as valid as any other colloquial variation of english.

as someone else mentioned, the ability of native english speakers, be they american or english or whatever, from a prescriptive perspective, is largely terrible. However, they're descriptive english is perfectly fine.

if you can accurately portray your meaning, then you are accurately using a language to communicate an idea, who cares if your speech or essay on third world debt contains 4 split infinitives...

my point is, if i have one here, is that, i know all you guys that read the non-native posts in this thread will have noticed the, what we consider to be, simple baby-like mistakes. however, every single native-speaker post here is laced with inaccuracies, horrendous festering pustular deviations from prescriptive english but hey, who cares, we are so accustomed to reading/hearing our own mistakes that we dont even notice them...

ok, i remembered my point... descriptive english, indeed, descriptive language is vastly more important in life than anal channels of prescription. except, of course, when you have an equally anal syntax exam the next day...

加油