“Learning Chinese is difficul” is a fact today, but not the truth. It is a bizarre phenomenon beyond our understanding: some Chinese people vigorously publicize at home and abroad that “it is difficult to learn Chinese.” If you doubt my judgment, please see the example, which is just the latest:

On April 3 2009, Xinhua (Beijing) reported that the International Chinese Language Teaching and Research Institute was established in the Beijing Language and Culture University. The institute was managed by both Hanban (Confucius Institute Headquarter) and the Beijing Language and Culture University. It was set up “to solve the bottleneck problem that ‘it is difficult for foreigners to learn Chinese’.” Look, “learning Chinese is difficult” has become the agenda for the government. Earlier this year, the disturbances at Confucius institutes in the United States caused an uproar, and the Global Times said in an editorial on May 25 that “learning Chinese is difficult, but Confucius institute has become a successful model for both China and foreign countries to teach Chinese in cooperation.” Xinhua net (Beijing) also published an article entitled “Find fault with Confucius institutes: Why the powerful America has a phobia about Confucius” on May 26. In the article, it is said that “as is known to all, Chinese is difficult to learn, but in many countries around the world, including the US, there are unstoppable rising demand for learning Chinese.” It seems that the idea “learning Chinese is difficult” has become a consensus in China, so that when Chinese leaders go abroad to visit Confucius institutes, they would say to foreign students that “Chinese is charming, but hard to learn,” as if China is very sorry to for that. Sure, this has had impacts on foreigners’ attitude towards Chinese. A few days ago, Kevin Rudd (former Prime Minister of Australia) said on his Chinese micro-blog that “thank you, our Chinese friends; your language must be the most difficult language in the world.” (Reference News, April 24, 2012)

Is Chinese so difficult to learn? Yes, it is the case today. And you can still make it more complicated easily: to arrange a lesson for half a year and students can never graduate in thirty years! Of course, you can do so only if you have monopoly of teaching, and students have only one choice. It would need skills to turn complicated things into simple ones. However, it needn’t any skill vice versa, and you can manage it just by making them complicated! The problem of “learning Chinese is difficult” is man-made for the reason. It is deliberately made and exaggerated by some Chinese experts and scholars. They spare no effort to publicize “learning Chinese is difficult” to foreigners. Could you find any more ridiculous thing than that in the world? Is this honest or foolish, modest or showy, proud or inferior, to raise or discourage others’ enthusiasm, to encourage or obstruct others’ learning? It is probable, by a blending of both, with the second predominant. Anyway, it shows that they lack a clear understanding of their own culture. They lack confidence in and pride of it. At least, it is unwise, inappropriate or not politic!

And, it is also unjustifiable that “Chinese is difficult to learn.” Stupid people have the idea that foolishness is the essence of the language, actually they themselves are. Being difficult to learn is not a problem of Chinese itself, but caused by improper teaching methods. Without going into it too much, it is basic enough for Chinese to know 2,000 to 3,000 characters, but if you use alphabetic writing, you need to master 8,000 to 10,000 words, at least 4,000 to 5,000. Is it more difficult to learn these 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese characters than learning nearly 10,000 words? It partly reflects that there must be a matter in the method. Do not say that there were so many masterpieces or celebrities of linguistic study in ancient and modern China, the mere fact is that Chinese is the most difficult language makes Chinese scholars feel shame, and do not argue this. In fact, for thousands of years, the essence of Chinese official culture is privilege, hegemonies, mysticism and (pseudo) elitism. They do not wish to make culture worldly and turn it into a kind of public resources shared by the public; they consciously or unconsciously provide a roadblock to make it difficult to learn. In modern and contemporary times, because of blinding western-worship, it is greatly strengthened. They use the theory and method of alphabet writing to evaluate and teach Chinese, thus making it more difficult to learn than any other language.

For example, in Chinese, “zhu (pig)” and “rou (meat)” are two characters. After learning these two words, you can naturally understand “zhu rou” and “rou zhu”, because they are new phrases instead of new characters. If you want to master all of them, you just need to understand the former two characters, while in English, you need to memorize the four words: pig, meat, pork and hog. Anyone who learns pig and meat never know the meanings of pork and hog. It is interesting that in a Chinese dictionary, there are no words about pork, mutton or beef. Probably, pork is the flesh of hogs, so there is no need to explain the meaning of it. Like in alphabetic language, in Chinese, all walks of life have their own specific phrases; but different from in alphabetic language, in Chinese, all walks of life has no particular characters. You just need to grasp 2000 to 3000 most frequently used characters. Therefore, when teaching Chinese, you do not need to compile the Chinese books about travel, foreign trade and news, and the vocabulary of Chinese is smaller than that of any other alphabetic language. The deeper you study, the more things you will find so.

“Learning Chinese is difficult” has become the capital and job of many people. Any theory and practice that make Chinese easy to teach and learn is seen as unscientific, only the mysterious method they highly praise is “the most scientific.” That is the case in the linguistic teaching at home and abroad today, which means Chinese men of letters cannot even pass the Chinese test for foreigners, and the British also cannot pass the English test set by the Chinese. They teach many things that Chinese and foreigners do not understand, do not need and even do not exist, the palaver and foolishness of which has become the subject of criticism. Nowadays Chinese is moving to the world, the problem of Chinese teaching becomes more and more obvious. In fact, from ancient times, there had been some simple and good methods to learn Chinese, which makes it easy to teach and learn. We just need to abandon the idea and break the monopoly, and the problem of “learning Chinese is difficult” will not exist, and Chinese will become the easiest language to teach and learn.

The author is a professor of philosophy and the chief commentator of the Chinese Social Sciences Net, CASS.

Translated by Chen Meina

Revised by Gabriele Corsetti